


Surviving The Fall

by BustersJezebel



Series: Red Canyon [3]
Category: Red Canyon (2008)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, M/M, Murder, Oral Sex, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-01-25 13:44:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1650746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BustersJezebel/pseuds/BustersJezebel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to Young Reggie. Set post movie. Mac survived the fall. Now he needs to get Reggie and deal with Devon and Walter. If you've seen Red Canyon you need no further warning. If you haven't, I sincerely hope you have a strong stomach because this story contains explicit violence and sexual situations, not all of them consensual. Heed this warning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PeachyLana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeachyLana/gifts).



> Extra special thanks to Peachylana for her usual Mac input.

The growling snap jerked him awake. He couldn't see fucking shit. His mouth was as dry as the air surrounding him. Air now filled by the snarls of coyotes he realised foggily. He hurt, everyfuckingwhere.

His leg. Blood, he could smell blood. And he could hear the rending of flesh, the tearing of ligaments and the snap of newly dead bone. His brain tried to work out how he knew the difference between the snap of bone of someone newly dead versus someone who'd been dead for a while.

And how did he know it was a person who was dead? Couldn't it be an animal the coyotes were fighting over? Trying to move only makes him moan out loud.

Silence descends. Wrapping around him like a cold moist cloak. And then the growling starts again, he feels hot breath from blood-dripping jaws wash over him. It is fetid and rank. Like his own breath he thinks suddenly. Why was his own breath fetid?

Trying to move was a lesson in pain on pain. Everyfuckingthing hurt like a motherfucker. Minutes, maybe hours later he comes to again to the sound of flesh tearing. Feeling a tug on his leg he lurches and the warmth surrounding him scatters like leaves on the wind. But it doesn't go far.

His mind flits around, he'd been taken over the cliff by Devon's fucking prissy sorority girlfriend. Thought she was gonna die and take him with her. He laughed painfully. He fucking had news for her. He didn't fucking die. Even Lucifer wouldn't take him.

Focussing, Mac manages to move his fingers and toes. Though he can't move his right arm, the jagged snarls of pain that radiate from his collarbone tell him it's busted. Not to mention the leg. It was beyond fucked he thought. Slowly he stares at the stars twinkling happily down on him, his left hand moves down his body. Bringing his left leg up slowly as he moves at the same time.

After several false starts he manages to grip the cell phone he kept on him at all times hidden in his boot. He loses it several times as he brings it back up his body. Time passes as he fades out of consciousness again. When he regains it for the last time he sees the sky getting lighter.

He presses the power button on. And then takes too much time remembering the pin he'd set on it. He'd picked something obscure so Walter or Devon if they ever came across it couldn't crack it. It had one number in it. He hit redial.

"Doctor Johnson." His voice answers on the third ring. It sounds sleepy. Mac has no idea what the time is.

"'S me. Need help." He is finding it harder to breathe and he can no longer feel either of his legs.

"Where are you?" The voice is brisk now.

"Off a fucking cliff. Coyotes." Mac can say no more as the pain and cramps of withdrawal hit him now and he blacks out again.

He lies silent and still but alive under the sun as it rises and begins to bake the land around him.

##########

Hours later the sun is fading from the sky when desert coloured hiking boots stop beside Mac. The figure kneels and takes his pulse, timing it against the complicated watch on their wrist. Then they check his body for breaks. The leg they purse their lips over before they look up at Mac's face. It's pallid in the dying daylight.

They'll have to set it out here. With a compound fracture they're damn lucky he hadn't already died. The bites in the flesh tell him that Mac has been nibbled on already. They swiftly assemble the gurney they'd bought along and then taking a breath they poke and prod at Mac's leg making sure there are no other breaks.

Without warning they snap the bone back into place. Mac moans but doesn't wake. Sighing in relief they do the same with his collarbone. Then they bandage the leg, they'll stitch it when they're where they need to be. Now the only issue is internal bleeding and withdrawal. Slowly rolling Mac onto the stretcher they strap him in, pick up an end and begin the hike to the cave they know about.

When they get there they leave Mac on the stretcher and just stare at the set-up he had. If they ever needed confirmation he was batshit crazy this cave was it. Leaving Mac strapped they begin the disgusting work of cleaning what is going to be his home for the next while.

Good thing he kept shit around. He refilled the generator and made a list of what he needed to bring back. Then he looked down at Mac and shook his head. Manhandling the stretcher over to the bed he used leverage to slide Mac up onto the bed then roll him carefully to get rid of the stretcher.

After he's finished stitching, cleaning and redressing the wound the man looks down at Mac. He can't be left like he is. And so for the first time in his secret cave Mac himself is secured against freedom. Leaving a bottle of water by Mac's side, close enough he'd be able to get at it despite the restraints, the man stared down at Mac's now naked body. Shit, he had scratches and scabs everywhere.

"Fucking fucker." The man muttered before he grabbed his backpack and left.

##########

A day later he pulled up where it had been arranged that he would if he ever had to visit. He unloads the truck and then throws the beige camouflage netting over it. Taking up the sled he'd bought along to carry everything he slides the straps over his shoulders and begins the trek back into the cave and Mac.

When he gets there he lights the lantern. The water was gone, the cave stank of unwashed man. The metallic scent of Mac's detoxing body was almost a visible haze in the air. Waving his hand in front of his face the man checked Mac's leg. He frowned over the red inflamed skin. Then he hooked up the first of several IV bags he'd packed. Letting it hang from a hook nailed somehow into solid rock he cleans Mac up from his soiling himself, redresses his wound and then makes himself a meal.

Unpacking the cot he makes up his bed and lays down. Running through his list he catalogues everything he's done. Beginning to doze, he forces himself to stand and rinse and wash himself and clean his teeth with some of the water he'd brought back. Then putting out the lantern he lets his body slide into sleep.

Time has no meaning in the cave, his watch tells him what time of day it is along with the date but the time itself has no meaning. Three days pass before the IV bags are used and Mac still hasn't regained consciousness. He's not worried though. The man hadn't died from the push over the cliff top, he wasn't going to die from withdrawal, but when he came to, he was going to feel the hell of it though.

Which if he knew what he was doing, and he did would be in about another day. He checked the leg again, the redness was fading. He'd stitched the flesh and it would heal, not especially well given how long blood flow to nerves and muscles had been cut off. But Mac still had the leg and with work he should be able to use it again. He was just lucky he hadn't suffered any internal bleeding. The leg, the collarbone and some ribs were his injuries apart from scrapes and bruises and the physical shock of the fall.

##########

It is on the fourth day when the faint and decaying smell finally draws him. He'd been ignoring it mostly, but he was curious. Taking a torch and supplies he follows his nose quite literally. Winding down the tunnel he realises that the way had been marked with ultraviolet paint, going back he grabs the black light torch he'd seen and wondered about.

Following the marks for what feels like hours, the smell gets stronger. Eventually he comes to another cavern and the smell nearly overwhelms him. Covering his face he breathes shallowly. Whoever said breathing through your mouth worked was a fuckwit, all it made you do was taste the smell. He didn't care what anyone said, you could taste smell.

Edging slowly to the open hole in the floor he stops just shy of the edge and asks himself if he truly wants to know. Shaking his head and girding himself he cracks the glow sticks he's brought along and shaking them he drops them in. It was as he thought. A human refuse dumping ground. Seeing the bags of lime lining the wall he grabs some of them and opening them, dumps it in. Then he shakes his head and walks back to Mac.

It is a full week before Mac becomes lucid.

And violent.

The man eventually puts gloves on Mac's hands as he keeps picking at his own fingers or plucking at his thighs, the only part of his body he could reach. He force feeds him when he's not overly lucid, cleans him up repeatedly and listens to his howls and screams as he shudders along with Mac hearing his responses to the nightmares shaking his rickety mind even more.

##########

The straps are fucking infuriating him. He can't get himself loose. Better not be some bitch thinking she's having a good time at his expense. No, that's not right. There was something else, something he can't remember. When he sees who is standing beside him he realises something has happened, something monumental.

Because he would never call this man unless he had no choice. That was their deal.

"What the fuck happened?" His voice surprises him, it's thin and reedy, little more than a whisper. Feels like he hasn't used it in a while.

"You tell me, you called me, said and I quote 'off a fucking cliff, coyotes' and then you passed out. If I hadn't given you a phone with a tracker in it you'd be dead." The man is blunt as he draws up a stool and sits down. His long legs spread with his elbows resting on his knees.

They look alike though the man is lighter. It always surprises him to see his face to a certain degree on another man. He's used to never seeing anyone like that. Devon had his mother's looks so did…Reggie. Fuck.

"You see the bar? The girl?" He asks abruptly.

The man shakes his head. "Why would I go see Walter? And what girl?"

Mac curses when he tries to draw his hand up to rub it over his face. "Let me the fuck go."

"No, after you've detoxed, you need to get clean, you've already lost most of your fucking teeth. I'll be fucked if you OD on me Elvira."

"Don't fucking call me that." Mac snipes at the man, just like he'd done his entire adult life.

"I'll call you whatever the fuck I like, you call me at the crack of dawn, injured enough I need to take time off work and risk taking your life by moving you, I can't admit you to a hospital, all the shit I've been doping you with is off the books, I have to somehow find a way to explain that to the drug administration board if they find out, I'll call you whatever the fuck I like Elvira." By the time the man has finished his rant he is leaning over Mac's face close enough to kiss.

"Fuck off you fag." Mac answers him, their eyes connect and neither look away until Mac's suddenly close. "Let me fucking go."

"No." And with that he gets up and goes back to his cot.

Mac's murderous gaze follows him. Then he looks around. The man has cleaned up, he's brought his own cot and bedding, "How long have I been here?" He asks quietly.

Glancing over the man grins at him. "A week now."

Mac closes his eyes. His mind goes back over what he remembers. He remembers…Walter telling him they were coming back. He remembers Walter stopping him from beating on Devon in the bar. He remembers Reggie didn't remember him. At all.

He remembers the sheriff, the Indian dude, the blonde jock. And the fucking sorority girlfriend, Devon's beard. He'd followed Reggie, but he'd been obeying Walter when he'd killed the jock. The Indian had been all him though.

Fucker thought he could touch what was his. Didn't matter whether Reggie remembered she was his, the fact remained she was and he could prove it. Cursing when he tried to rub his hand over his face again Mac doesn't bother asking to be let loose.

"Fucker." He mutters. A snort is his only answer.

The ensuing days nearly drive him insane, the sheer loathing he has for the man who is actually saving his life grows daily, or so he thinks.

The skin-crawling withdrawal that he suffered seemed to increase exponentially with each day that passed without him having any meth. In only the darkest recesses of his mind Mac realises it's a good thing the man is doing.

But it is something he'll never thank him for.

##########

The man wakes one morning in silence. He lays with his eyes open in the darkness letting it envelop him. He heard nothing beyond his own breathing. And that thought jolts him up in bed so fast his head swims. He grabs the torch and switches it on. Shining it over to the bed he is relieved to see Mac lying and sleeping peacefully.

Peacefully, that was a misnomer if ever he heard one for Mac he thought sarcastically. Getting up he felt Mac's forehead, dry and cool. His pulse was a smidgen fast but nothing like it had been. Turning on the generator he switches on the lights and looks at the leg. No redness. Thank God.

Washing himself off, he dresses and cleans his teeth. He'll have to go for supplies soon or leave and take Mac with him. He doesn't know which yet.

"When you gonna untie me?" The voice is a soft, hoarse growl. And clear.

"Who am I?" He turns back to Mac after pulling on some hiking shorts over his underwear and walking back to Mac's bed.

"A fucking fag." Mac answers him. The man shakes his head and turns away. He's making them something to eat when there is a huff of breath and then, "Seth." The man smiles but it doesn't show on his face when he turns around.

"Your full name?" He asks simply.

"MacQuade Johnson." Mac answers promptly.

"Occupation?"

Mac snorts. "Mechanic and cook."

This time the man snorts. "Wife's name?"

"Fucker." Mac grunts this time and the man raises his eyebrows.

"Father's name?"

"Walter, you fuck as you know."

The man shrugs. "I may know, I'm testing you. As you know." Sitting down now with a bottle of water that he opens and gives to Mac he sits back in his chair. "So, tell me what happened, from the beginning."

He watches Mac look at him, stare at him like he was something he was dissecting in his head. Which for all Seth knew he was.

"How the fuck am I supposed to drink this?" Mac asked irritatedly.

Seth grins, "After everything you've done to those women in the pit over the years I expect you're fully aware of how to drink that water nephew."

"Don't fucking call me that!" Mac threatens as he proves he does know how to drink the water. Shoehorning himself around onto one hip he contorts himself on his side and then manages to bring his shoulders down enough to get his mouth around the bottle. Then he raises it and drinks the water down.

Seth watches him companionably as he drinks his own water in the traditional way. Mac was lucid enough to be let go. But he still couldn't cope on his own. When Mac had finished the water he lays back down again with a sigh. Sweat is sheening his body. He was on the mend, but he still had a way to go.

"Price of release, tell me how and who got you fucked up like this." Seth's voice is soft, barely above a whisper, no one but Mac and his own significant other would recognise the singular menace that was threaded through it. If the people of Cainville thought Mac was a holy terror, they had no idea the hell an angry Seth could rain down on them.

"I'll take care of it." Mac answered simply.

"No, not yet, not on that leg. You want to take care of it, of them I don't have a problem with that, but you're going to have to wait a fair while, months." Seth finishes his water and stands. "And tonight we're out of here, you're well enough to travel and I need to get back to work before I lose my job."

Beginning to pack, Seth let Mac think on what he'd said. He spoke just as Seth finished breaking down his cot and packing it on the sled. "How bad was I?"

"Bad enough that you had to be restrained, why the fuck did you start using in the first place?" Mac shakes his head. Seth sighs. "Whatever, you're going have to come home with me, stay with us for a few months at least, that way I can work and track your recovery and Reece can do your rehab at home."

"That fag is not fucking touching me." Mac growls. Seth stops and looks at him.

"Don't worry nephew, fucking men isn't catching." He chuckles but it's a mean sarcastic chuckle. A shudder rips down Mac's spine.

He was hearing himself he knew. Fuck. "Have you been to the bar?" He asks, deliberately changing the subject.

"Why would I go see Walter? You know I'd just fucking kill him." Seth stops what he's doing and sits down again looking at Mac. "You need to tell me what the fuck happened, now." His tone is firm and the way he settles himself tells Mac in no uncertain terms that he's not moving until he's been answered to his satisfaction.

"Get me that box over there, the wooden one. Mac gestures over to a cupboard. Seth stands and goes to it. When he comes back he looks at Mac before he sits down and then leans forward and with one hand loosens one of Mac's wrist restraints.

Then he places the box on Mac's bed and sits back again. Mac flexes his wrist and takes the glove off with his teeth, then watching Seth carefully like prey watches for that which is hunting it, he carefully reaches across his body to undo his other wrist. Seth lets him.

Breathing what he hopes is an unnoticeable sigh of relief Mac then sits and goes for his legs. "Leave those for now, you can't move that leg yet anyway." Mac hesitates and then pulls the blanket back.

"Fuck." He says softly as he looks at the mess that was his leg.

"Yeah, you did screw it up well." Seth says quietly. "Like I said Reece will need to do rehab on you. You don't have a choice about coming home with me." He says no more on the subject merely gestures to the box. He already knew what was in there, he'd opened it when he was cleaning to see if it was something to toss away. But this was Mac's story to tell.

And so he did. His voice a monotone Mac told his story, from when he was eighteen, on to when Reggie had been seventeen and then eighteen herself. He opened the box and showed Seth the contents. And all the while Seth watched him carefully. Silently his mind negotiating possibilities and probabilities like the steel trap it was.

When Mac finished he stayed silent for some time. He watched as Mac lay down again and closed the box, resting it on his chest.

"She's yours then huh?" He questioned after a time.

"Yeah, her fucking mother traded her life for her daughters, like it was fucking nothing." Mac's words were incensed.

"It happens." Seth shrugs with little thought. He didn't know Regina or her mother or her brother. Though, "You do realise you're going to have to kill them? You're not going to get her back without doing that?" He says bluntly to Mac.

He snorts at the feral grin that crosses Mac's face. "What was I thinking?" He murmured more to himself. "Another reason you need to come home with me, you need to be in top form in every way, if they're doing to her what you think she's going to need you in every way, every way MacQuade. Do you understand me?" He questioned quietly.

Mac might be a narcissistic psychopathic but if he had property he took care of it. Or he used to. Given that he'd thought of this girl Regina as his property and how long he'd thought of her as his property she might be worth hanging onto. Seth had noticed even though Mac didn't, that he settled as he spoke about her.

Looking at the old white bite mark on Mac's neck Seth suddenly realised she'd given it to him. Well fuck. Taking a deep breath he began the arduous task of repacking everything. He left Mac to drag the sled back to the truck. Packing everything in, he put the netting back over the vehicle and then took the now empty sled back to the cave.

Mac was dozing when he returned. Seth woke him, dressed him, and manhandled him onto the sled and then making sure there was nothing identifying either one of them he switched off the generator and made sure the fuel lines were off. He left the fuel, something told him Mac would be back.

Dragging a dead weight through the caves he didn't speak and thankfully neither did Mac. Seth was just grateful he'd reined himself in and was cooperating. He didn't expect that to last, he just hoped he'd be able to think of ways to talk him around until he was as healed as he was going to be. He knew Mac hadn't yet realised the exact damage to his leg.

When he did though the shit was going to hit the fan and then some. "Fuck my life." Seth muttered to himself as he dragged Mac's reclining body through the cave.

"No thanks, like I said I'm not a fag." Seth snorted but said nothing, he didn't have the breath for it anyway. But he determined that when he was home the first thing he was going to do was fuck the living shit out of Reece as long and as loud as he could, just to get Mac's goat.

Ungrateful shit.

Getting Mac into the backseat took a wrenched muscle on Seth's part and a lot of sweating and swearing. But Mac surprised Seth by doing nothing more than curse the situation. He made no complaints.

Once Mac was settled with the wooden box sitting securely on the floor where he could reach it easily Seth gets in and starts the engine. He'd packed the camouflage netting in the back with the supplies he was bringing home. Putting on the water for the windscreen he washed away the weeks of accumulated dirt and dust and then he looked at Mac sitting behind him, his back was resting on the passenger door, his legs stretched out in front of him.

"You ready Elvira?" He asked, this was going to be a painful trip, Mac's addiction meant he had an extremely high tolerance for medication and Seth wasn't dosing him up to get him home. He could fucking well live with it. No way was he getting addicted to anything else on his watch. His sister, Mac's mother would fucking kill him.

"Don't call me that." Mac muttered as he settled his back against the pillow Set had shoved between his back and the door.

"Sure thang Miz Daisy." Seth mockingly saluted Mac as he put the truck in gear and engaged the four-wheel drive.

What feels like hours later Seth's head is throbbing from Mac's incessant cursing and punching the back of the passenger seat. He'd only made the mistake of punching the back of Seth's once.

The headlights flash across the road ahead and Seth nearly weeps at the relief. "Thank fuck." He says to himself. Disengaging the four-wheel drive he gets onto the blacktop heading south. Driving through the night when it's cool they stop only for gas.

"Don't even try it, unless you need to take a shit I'm not moving you out until I'm home." He says. The look in Mac's eyes tells him he's thinking seriously of gutting him. "Fucking try it and I'll finish the job your sorority bitch started." He says calmly.

It is only that Mac sees himself in Seth's eyes he knows that stops him. They are two peas in a pod after all. Seth had just learned how to harness his baser instinct.

For the most part.

When they pass into Arizona the sun begins to rise. Seth drives on and notices Mac has dropped off. "Thank fuck." He mutters again. Digging out his cell phone he calls Reece and estimates their arrival. Reece tells him the spare bedroom is already set up.

He doesn't say anything other than yes when Seth tells him to prepare himself as well. Reece knew him, accepted him. He'd started his own business because of him. It allowed him the freedom to take time off when he needed it. When Seth went overboard and played too hard.

"Thank you baby." He says quietly.

"Anytime." Reece answers as he disconnects the call.

Arriving home midmorning is nothing but a relief to Seth, but he still has work to do. He wakes Mac as he drives around to the back of his house. He'd bought land, didn't do anything with it, but he needed the space, they needed the space. Sometimes what happened around them didn't need witnesses.

Reece steps out onto the deck as Seth pulls up, passenger door closest to the steps. He walks down and looking inside makes sure Mac has gripped the seat before he opens the door.

"Hey Mac." He speaks softly as he always does. His hands grip Mac before Mac can say anything and haul him out gently. As he's pulling he looks over at Seth as he comes around. "Can he bend the leg?"

"He can, but he shouldn't, remember to keep it as straight as you can Mac." Seth says to him, he stands by and as soon as Reece clears Mac's body he slides his hands underneath and supports Mac's thighs and then his calves as they clear the vehicle. "Got to piss and shit I assume from all the groaning you did before?" Seth asks. He smiles at Reece's snort of laughter.

"Yeah fag I do." Reece inhales sharply. Seth grins mirthlessly.

"A word of advice, fag doesn't bother me, it bothers Reece, so if you're going to continue to use it he'll piss in every drink he brings you, every dish of food he cooks for you and more. So if I were you, I'd clean up your thoughts Elvira." He used his old nickname for Mac deliberately.

Knowing Mac hated it, if he went the way Seth thought he would he'd bargain for him to stop using that in return for him not using fag.

It wouldn't work, but it would be fun for Mac to try. He didn't have issues with the word fag, but Mac would learn soon enough that he and Reece were two different people.

With Mac settled on the toilet Seth grabs Reece. "I fucking missed your face." He said softly as his lips took Reece's. Opening his mouth on Reece he sucked his tongue back into his mouth. Reece tasted like oatmeal and tea and Reece. Groaning Seth pushed Reece back against the wall as he ground his hips into him.

Feeling Reece's answering hardness only made him groan more. "Fucking cut that shit out." Mac called. Reece broke away and laughed even as his hands skated down and inside Seth's cargos. He palmed his backside as he looked down slightly at Seth and then with a smile he sank to his knees.

"Oh fuck, close your fucking ears Elvira." Seth called out as he spread his legs for Reece to work and rested his palms on the wall in front of him. He let his head hang down, eyes open and unblinking so he didn't miss a thing. Reece giving head was one of his favourite things to watch.

Moaning Seth felt Reece's wet mouth suck him down. "Fuck, I missed you baby." Reece murmured an agreement as he sucked Seth's cock down. Seth growled when Reece tried to tease him. "No, just make me come now. I need it, need you to." He said.

Obeying Reece began to suck him, hard and fast, his cheeks hollowing more with each sucking bob of his head. Seth watched his mouth open in a silent moan of pleasure. He saw drool literally drop out of his mouth in a long glistening spiral and land on Reece's shoulder.

The thought that finally after so long his cock was in Reece's warm and welcoming mouth was too much. Seth felt his balls draw up tight and just as Reece's fingers skated over his perineum brushing his piercings there he boiled over in orgasm. Reece tugging on the rings made him shout his pleasure.

He ignored Mac's cursing from the bathroom as he stayed exactly where he was and basked in the afterglow that only Reece could give him.

Pushing a hand away he grabbed Reece's shirt and pulled him up. Tilting his mouth over Reece's, Seth chased the taste of his come. He smiled into the kiss when Reece shared the mouthful he'd kept.

"I have to go, I have clients today." Reece said eventually. They pulled apart and Seth looked at him, all bronze gilded skin from his constantly being in the sun. His straight black hair pulled back loosely at the nape of his neck. His perfect face that had graced countless magazine covers.

"God, you're beautiful. I can't get over how beautiful you are. And that you stay with me." Seth said softly. He leaned up and kissed Reece one more time before he pulled back. "Bring home dinner tonight?" He asked. "I doubt I'll be up for cooking." Reece nodded.

"Was going to." He straightened his clothing and laying one last soft, lingering kiss on Seth's lips he walked back down the kitchen and gathered his things and looking back once with a smile he left Seth and Mac alone for the next several hours.

Making a mental note to reciprocate and then some for Reece tonight Seth went into the spare bedroom and opened the bathroom door. He grinned seeing Mac still sitting on the toilet, leg thrust awkwardly in front of him and a towel wrapped around his head.

"You fucking, I fucking swear…" Seth shook his head and interrupted Mac.

"I've heard you say it all before Elvira, now." He paused making sure he had Mac's attention. "Fancy a bath?"


	2. Chapter 2

Mac let Seth get him settled in the bath with his bad leg propped up on the edge. As the hot water seeped into his bones he began to relax, really relax for the first time in fuck knows how long.

But he should have known Seth wouldn't let him stay that way.

He came in as Mac leaned his head back on the towel that Seth had set down for him. He felt fucking weird with Seth in the room. "Get the fuck out." He muttered sullenly.

"Removing your stitches while you're immobile, then you can soak the leg a little, I've got some stuff to dry off the wound when you get out. But you can't have it in there for long. Sit back and relax Elvira." Seth answered sarcastically.

"Fuck off." Mac answered. "And stop calling me that, ain't my fault." He said.

Seth laughed. "I guess when the only enjoyment I get is a rise out of you I've sunk to new depths." Shaking his head he brought some sterile scissors over and knelt by the tub. "Wash your fucking hair, looks like a grease pit." Mac groaned as Seth pushed and prodded at his wound. "Going to strap this when I'm done. Then you can rest until tomorrow. After that," He paused and looked across at Mac with a feral grin on his face. "Well, after that you're in Reece's hands."

"No fucking way is that fag touching me, you can do it." Seth snorted as he slowly and steadily snipped the stitches. When he'd finished he took up the tweezers and began to pull each stitch out.

"I have to go back to work, I've already taken vacation time that Reece and I were saving for a trip we had planned, you'll let him touch you and exercise you if you want to get back to your woman." Seth's voice is mild but Mac can tell he's pissed him off. "We had a deal MacQuade, I don't have a problem with being here for you, but even I have limits. I can't afford to lose my job and I'd kill you if I had to spend another week with you. As it stands Reece will be lucky if I don't kill him tonight."

Mac swallowed. It was the first time in years Seth had alluded to something they had in common. He shied away from it himself most of the time. Doing but never thinking. "I never asked you to look out for me." He said instead as he closed his eyes and carefully dunked himself in the tub, hunching down at the hips without moving his leg. He rose back up and took up the soap and lathered it in his hair.

"No, your mother did, I promised her and I'm not going to break that promise. She took me in when our parent's died, it's the least I can do." Seth answered as Mac carefully lowered himself and rinsed his hair.

Finishing the removal of Mac's stitches Seth sat back, leaning on the side of the tub. He looked out the window at the arid land around them. Mac continued to half-heartedly wash and rinse himself off in the silence. It was surprisingly comfortable.

When he'd finished washing he opened the washcloth and simply rested it over his face, breathing in the heat and letting himself relax even more. "What do you have against Reece in particular? I've seen you with other men you knew were homosexual, so I know it's Reece in particular that bothers you. You never had a problem with me until he took up with me. Why?" Seth asked quietly.

Mac sighed. He knew he'd have to tell Seth sooner or later and he knew Seth was going to laugh his arse off at him when he found out. "He fucks you." He says simply.

"So? I fuck him too." Seth answered.

"Not the point." Mac says no more hoping it's enough of an explanation, knowing it's not.

"What is the fucking point?" Irritation colours Seth's voice again now.

"He fucks you, I have your face." Mac finally gives the truth.

"And you think he has so little self-control he's going to what? Fuck you one day against your will? I promise you Reece has more control than the two of us put together, the shit I put him through, you have no fucking idea." Seth says to Mac. His voice is low-pitched and barely controlled.

Fuck, he's pissed Seth off now. Usually he lived for that, but not today. "I'll stop saying fag and shit okay?" He asks grudgingly.

"Whatthefuckever." Seth answers as he stands up. He leans down and takes the washcloth off Mac's face. "Get the fuck up, I need a shower too." Manhandling Mac up and out of the tub Seth gets him dry and after dressing and strapping his leg, he finds himself dressed in a pair of Seth's own sweatpants. They fit well.

"Fucking hate that you look like me." Mac mutters as he settles himself on the bed, the pain is grinding him down but he's doing his best to ignore it, he's suffered pain before.

"Got it wrong Elvira, you look like me, I'm older." Seth snorted and then left the bedroom. The door was open and Mac could look in the mirror and see Seth walk past a couple of times, he heard the shower in Seth's bedroom and then silence.

Then Seth re-entered the room and moved into the bathroom. Mac could see him cleaning the tub and gathering up the clothes he'd worn here. He walked back through with the clothes and towels. Mac continued to watch as much as he could Seth doing everyday things he'd never seen him do before.

Laundry, bathroom, kitchen though he didn't see that, only heard it. Then he came back in with a tray and some solid food. Well kind of. Soup and bread and a glass of milk. "Fucking milk?" Mac questioned.

"Yes, fucking milk, you need the calcium dickwad." Settling it down Seth moves to the armchair and pulling a cordless phone out of his pocket he sits down with a sigh and makes a phone call. Mac begins to spoon up the soup as he hears Seth call work.

"Yes, its Doctor Johnson is…?" He paused. "Thank you I'd appreciate it." He waits some more. "Yes, I am. Yes, Monday is fine, I appreciate the weekend, thank you Doctor, I'll see you then." He pushed the off button. "Thank fuck." Looking over at Mac he smiled and for the first time Mac realised how tired he looked.

"How the fuck do you do it?" He asked curiously.

"Do what?" Seth asked him.

"Function like you're normal when we both fucking well know you're not." Mac knew his crazy was in Seth too, like Reggie and Devon they got a double dose from their mother's side of the family.

"Because Reece keeps me sane, well mostly sane." Seth said and amended. "With him I can let myself go and my most basic instincts come out. They're never too much for him, it's like he's built as my opposite, like he's built to soak me up when I explode psychopathy all over the fucking place." Seth scrunched down in the chair, stretching and spreading his legs and letting his head rest on the back of the chair as his eyes closed.

Mac watched him fall asleep without saying anything and let himself settle down as well. He looked around as his own eyelids got heavier. Seth had a nice place. He looked at the walls and the weird sponging on them that made them look almost like a rock surface. The colour of them made them look like Red Canyon near Cainville. Like he was living in the real canyon almost.

The furnishings were comfortable. Mac twitched. He'd never had anything like this, even before Walter turfed him out at eighteen to his old place they'd never had anything like this. Not since he was too young to remember anyway. Rubbing a shaking hand across his chest Mac doesn't realise he's grieving for what might have been.

Seth had come into his life when he was two and left when he was twelve. He'd tried to take Mac but Walter hadn't allowed it. And he'd nearly killed Seth teaching him that lesson. And then, years later he'd found Seth's letters that he'd continually sent and Walter had not given to him.

By that stage Mac was grown and already set on his path. He remembered their first meeting in a bar a few towns over so Walter wouldn't see Seth. And he remembered what they'd done after. And he remembers the phone call in the middle of the night after he'd begun to get involved with Reggie and what he'd found when he'd dropped everything and come as Seth had asked.

And he remembers the argument after he'd cleaned up and cleaned Seth up. Mac snorted softly. Seth thought he could bury the crazy, like fuck he could bury it. But he'd found a path to walk that still let him function Mac now realised as he continued to look around the room he was lying in.

He needed to do that. With Reggie, if she was still alive.

Closing his eyes Mac mentally reached for her. He knew he wouldn't be able to touch her this way, but sometimes, sometimes in the deepest recesses of his own mind he felt he could reach his mind out and touch hers. He always felt better after he tried anyway.

Letting his mind travel back over the miles to Cainville, his last look at her across the fire when he'd killed Devon's cousin who had not even a skerrick of crazy in him. Just asshattery. He should have taken her then, but the dead had called to him that night.

He'd been lost in a morass of blood and organs and fetid, rancid smells. He'd wanted to bathe in all of it until he was steeped in it. Until their blood and organs were so deep inside him they oozed out of his pores.

Inside his mind he walked around the dump he called home, he touched his few furnishings, he brushed his fingers over the drawings of Walter's tattoo that he did when he was off his face more than usual. He dreamt of it coming to life in the worst of his nightmares and then moving from Walter to him and wrapping itself around his body and burrowing in until it obscured all of him. Took him over.

Walking out of the house in his mind Mac gets in his truck and drives to the bar, he pauses on the front porch of it and looks to the motel cabins. Raising his nose in the air he sniffs it and scents her. His woman. Reggie's wild, feral, and female smell drifting on the breeze. It called to Mac like a siren of old would call to sailors.

Walking to the cabins he stopped at the end one. Rolling his head on his shoulders until it cracked he walked up the steps and through the door. He shuddered as he felt Reggie's suffering wrap around his throat.

Back in Tucson Mac frowned as he felt chill air skate across his skin despite the fact that there was no air conditioning on in his room. His window was open to catch the breeze of the day, neither Seth nor Reece were a huge fan of canned air.

He watched helpless as Devon fucked Reggie and she did nothing to stop him. She was tied down granted but she lay there like a fucking rag doll, not fighting, not crying not shouting at Devon. She'd never been that passive with him. Lying on his bed Mac brushed his fingers over his old scar on his neck, the one she'd given him.

Digging is fingers in, he pinched the scarred flesh and twisted it on a moan as it grounded him. His eyes shot open and he winced as he jarred his leg. Rubbing the scar repeatedly he let himself settle down again. Returning to the motel room he stood and watched impotently as Devon raped his property.

He'd pay for that, repeatedly. When he was finished he sat on the edge of the bed and caught his breath. Reggie didn't move. Mac could smell sperm in the air and knew without a doubt Devon had not used a condom. He'd make him eat his shit for that. For allowing himself to spill inside Mac's property. No one did that but Mac.

Shuddering on the bed on the outskirts of Tucson Mac looked at his property. She was alive.

Feeling fingers skating over his own forehead Mac let himself be brought back to the present.

He could feel Reggie was alive though, he could feel it in the very marrow of his bones, her soul was calling to him, for him. And when he could, he would answer.

For now that was enough.

Opening his eyes he is surprised to realise darkness has fallen. He's slept with Seth he realises. Reece's fingers were brushing his face. Fighting his instinctive need to pull away Mac looked up at him.

Hair was falling out of the ponytail he'd pulled it back in, his eyes were openly assessing Mac in a clinical way. His fingers were cool on Mac's face. And gentle. Mac came back fully when he realised Reece was taking his pulse.

"I can make a tea that will help with the withdrawal if you want, it won't taste pleasant and it's not easy to blend so I'm not going to make it if you're not going to drink it MacQuade." He uses Mac's full name.

Mac shakes his head, "I can deal with that, it's the cramps." He frowned as he realised he'd admitted a weakness to this man, this man whom he thought of as weak as he didn't fight Seth and Seth's dark and violent needs. It doesn't cross his mind that Reggie is exactly the same way with him.

But Reece merely nodded. "It would help those too. Let me know." He puts a large bottle of water on Mac's bedside table and then moves over to Seth, settling a light blanket across his shoulders and body he turns back to Mac. "Are you hungry?"

Mac nods. Reece wordlessly hands him some crutches Mac hadn't noticed he'd leaned against the wall. "Time to get up and moving, the more mobile you are the better indication I'll have about what rehab you need for that leg." Reece speaks quietly enough that he doesn't wake Seth. Then he makes sure the crutches are the right height and he walks out leaving Mac to follow.

Fucker, Mac narrowed his eyes as he looked after him. Sly fucker he amended. Hobbling along he manages to get himself to the kitchen. Reece has set the table and Mac stops and stares. It's clean, neat and tidy, like the bedroom. 

He'd never felt more like a fucking wetback with his darker skin and hair than in their pristine kitchen.

"Want me to eat in my room?" He asked sullenly.

Reece frowned at him. "What? Why?" He asked in puzzlement.

Mac shrugged. "I'm not clean." He answered.

"You're perfectly clean, Seth has bathed you I can tell." Reece is still puzzled. Then a light dawned. "We, none of us are clean MacQuade, I don't know exactly what your problem is with me specifically but I assure you, my hands are dirty, just like Seth's." He paused for a few seconds to make sure Mac was looking at him. "And yours."

Leaving the argument Mac hobbled to a chair and sat down with a moan of pain as he propped up his leg. "Gonna have to suck that up, not getting anything for it Elvira." Seth's sleep-roughened voice comes from the doorway where he is leaning against the jamb watching Reece and Mac interact.

"Fucker, don't think I haven't fucking realised that?" Mac asks him, irritated.

Seth snorted as he walked into the kitchen. Mac winced as he watched him slide a hand into Reece's hair and pull his head back awkwardly for a bruising kiss. Mac watched Reece allow it, his throat moving convulsively as he fought to swallow. Was that what he did?

Shaking his head Mac picked up the glass of juice and drank it down in a few gulps. He reached for the pitcher on the table and poured another glass. Fuck that tasted good. He says nothing as Seth turns Reece to him and kisses him some more, his hands moving over and under Reece's clothes.

But when Seth begins to kneel he speaks up. "Still fucking here, Reece told me he'd feed me, I have to eat to heal according to the both of you." He says loud and sarcastic. Seth rises up and looks over his shoulder at Mac.

Mac startles again seeing his face looking at him. Blonde yes, but still his, same brow and blazing eyes, same high cheekbones, same square and still pointed chin and wide, wide shoulders. The only real difference was Mac had a couple of moles above his lip near his nose and Seth had one under his bottom lip, on the left hand side.

Mac remembers playing connect the dots with his mother's moles when she'd been bedridden, Walter had beat him bloody when he'd come home and seen her covered in vivid blue marking pen. He'd made Mac and Seth wash it all off before they'd been able to eat dinner that night. Even though his mother had said she'd told him to do it.

Walter hadn't listened. Walter never listened. He'd been wrapped around that fucking Ashton cunt since before Mac was born. How the fuck Reggie had come out of that bitch he didn't know. Didn't care to know.

He'd never been there when Mac's mother, Seth's sister had been ill, bedridden and dying. He'd left everything to Seth, even looking after Mac. Until his mother had passed and then Seth had been booted and nearly killed for trying to take Mac. Mac was Walter's property he'd said, not Seth's. Would their crazy have even manifested if they'd stayed together?

Blinking away the memories Mac dug mechanically into the food that was put in front of him. He ate the Chinese without complaint as his mind moved backward in time to the year he'd met Reggie, what he'd done to buy her. Then a couple of years later, hosing her off that afternoon. Was it then when he'd realised she was going to be more? Or was it when her scent called to him that day as she'd walked past his house?

Mac watches his hands shake as he walks through the past. Tripping as he continued to eat he comes up against his most recent memory, or was it? Was it a dream? He didn't know. But he did know, he felt in the very marrow of his rotting bones that Reggie, his Reggie was alive.

Not well, not free and possibly not even sane, but she was alive.

Anything else he could work with.

##########

Later that evening after he'd eaten and sat in the kitchen watching as Reece and Seth cleaned up and then sat him down to talk about his rehab Mac closed his bedroom door. He crutched to the bathroom, used the toilet and cleaned what teeth he had left. All without looking at himself in the mirror, he'd had enough of that looking at Seth tonight.

Moving back to the bedroom he propped up the crutches and sank onto the bed. Sighing Mac closed his eyes and let his head rest fully on the pillows. They smelled like citrus. How the fuck was he supposed to let the one person Seth could cope with touch him and get him better? He didn't know if he could. Seth treasured Reece. That was plain.

If he damaged Reece in any way he'd pay for it and then some. And Mac wasn't ready for someone to take his life. Not until he'd taken two more beforehand.

Walter and Devon.

Pulling a pillow over his face to try to block the sounds coming from Seth and Reece's bedroom Mac willed himself deaf as he buried himself in the past so he could find sleep.

##########

Reece rolled gingerly over in bed and switched off the alarm. Pre-dawn light was showing in the sky. Stars winking out one by one. He rotated his shoulders and then his arms and legs. When he was sure everything was working he sat up slowly and then got out of bed.

Turning he looked back at Seth still spread out there. He smiled softly. Limping into their bathroom he closed the door before turning on the shower. When steam filled the room he stepped in and let the hot water soothe his raw and ravished skin. It stung his cuts but he'd been expecting that.

Letting himself drift with the sensation of pulling steam into his lungs instead of straight air his mind drifted to the man sleeping across and down the hall. He smiled slightly as he remembered hearing Mac's movements even in the throes of the agony and ecstasy that Seth brought out in him.

Rinsing the sweat, come and blood off his body he let his muscles relax one by one. God knew he had a hell of a day cut out for himself. Pun not intended. Getting out of the shower he dried off and took note there was some blood still oozing from a cut on his thigh. He put the towel in the basin to be washed and then dabbed some tincture on his cuts before dressing the one still weeping blood.

Looking at his face he decided not to shave, but given the day he was expecting he took the time dry and then slick his hair back and braid it. He hated putting stuff in it but he couldn't be messing with it today.

Rotating his shoulders again he moved out of the bathroom taking the towel and tossing it on the bed so Seth would wash it with their sheets. The sun was just breaking over the horizon as he stepped into his kitchen only to be brought up short by Mac sitting there. He started initially thinking Seth had somehow teleported from the bed to the kitchen even as he had walked.

"Shit, I thought you were Seth." He said as a greeting. Mac flushed which confused him no end. Shaking his head Reece moved to the coffee maker and switched it on. He could invest in an automatic one with a timer but really, he and Seth didn't always keep to early mornings so it didn't matter too much.

"Always up early." Mac mumbled an answer.

"You like a big breakfast?" Reece questioned him as he went to the fridge. He glanced back over his shoulder to look at Mac as he didn't answer. Mac was looking at his cuts. He'd only tossed on a pair of cut-off sweatpants for now. He healed best for the most part leaving his cuts to the air to dry. "You have a problem you'd better tell me now." He says quietly as he shuts the fridge and moves to sit at the table.

Mac patted his naked breast wearing only sweatpants himself and frowned. Reece realised he'd been reaching for a cigarette. He smiled. "You've just realised you haven't had a cigarette since you went over the cliff haven't you?"

"Fuck." Mac put his head in his hands and repeated the word again.

"No meth, no smokes, next we'll have you turning vegetarian." Reece snorted a laugh when Mac turned a feral look of loathing on him. "Sorry, bad joke I guess. But at least you'll get to keep the teeth you have left, not that they're anything to look at really." He says wryly and gets up to go back to the fridge again. "I'm hungry, I'm cooking and I'll cook enough for three." He begins to do so.

Mac lets him and doesn't talk, nor does he fidget which Reece realised he'd been expecting as it was something that Seth would do, man couldn't sit still for the life of him. Mac however sat still as a statue, his eyes focused on something beyond Reece and the kitchen, beyond the desert horizon he was staring out at.

Reece frowned as he watched Mac out of the corner of his eye as he moved around the kitchen cooking breakfast. Whatever he was thinking of, whoever he was thinking of, he amended his thought, he needed to focus on that to heal, to get through the next months. The man should really be in a hospital, possibly a rehab centre. Reece didn't know how the hell he was sitting, never mind functioning. As much as he functioned anyway.

After a time he plated breakfast for them both, leaving Seth's warming in the oven. They ate ravenously, drank their juice and coffee and Mac stared at the bottle of water Reece sat in front of him. "Step one of recovery, stay well hydrated. When you finish a bottle you immediately come get another, no delay understand?" He questioned Mac.

Mac nodded. "What the real damage on my leg? Why can't I feel myself wiggle my toes?" Reece swallowed.

"Fuck, okay. You sure you're up for this?" He questioned quietly. Seth's eyes stared him down, made him swallow and God help him, made his cock twitch. Shit. Closing his own onyx ones Reece finally realised why Mac was wary of him. Grinning to himself he shook it off, he'd deal with that later. Or Seth would he thought.

"You know what a compound fracture is?" Mac nodded again. "Well when left untreated they cause complications beyond the traditional infection. Yours went untreated for around twenty-four hours or more from what we calculated. You've got the fracture, you've also got nerve, muscle and I suspect ligament damage. You're lucky you lived given how long you weren't treated, you're more than lucky you still have your leg at all." Reece finished talking and rose cleaning the table. He put everything in the dishwasher, rinsed the pans and placed them in there too and left it prepped for Seth to start when he'd eaten his own breakfast.

"And your rehab, that will be to fix that?" Reece hesitated as he glanced back over his shoulder at Mac. And Mac surprised him by catching his gaze and maintaining it. "As much as it can be fixed?" he clarified. Reece was so very thankful he understood that he wouldn't regain full use.

"Yes, if you'll let me MacQuade I will do the absolute best I can for you. Seth tells me you have someone to go back for, I'll get you ready to cope with all that entails." Reece looked at Mac evenly as he spoke. He blinks at Mac's next question.

"How old are you?"

Reece smiled at Mac as he answered, "I'm twenty-seven." Mac shook his head.

"You're nearly as young as her." He muttered.

"Her who?" Reece asked curiously. He knew Mac wasn't gay, had no homosexual bone in his body in fact but nor was he biased, his fag comments hid something deeper, something Reece would worm out of him before he put him back together. It was part of why Seth loved him after all. His absolute unbending quest for an answer when he had a question.

"She's mine. Bought and paid for." Mac answered him after a fashion.

"Yours? You, you actually bought her?" Reece can't help being incredulous.

"Yeah, made a deal with her mother, her life for her daughters." Mac looked up at him suddenly and Reece felt he was looking at Seth, but not Seth, this wasn't Seth. His breath wheezed as he looked at the sheer crazy evil quality emanating from Mac's eyes. Seth emanated crazy, or evil. Never both together.

And Reece finally understood Seth's wariness of Mac. Because Mac was more, much more. Mac was instinct. Mac was emotion. Mac was base, his soul as old as creation itself. Mac was _animal_.

"Will you tell me her name?" He asked, proud his voice did not show his nervousness.

"Not yet."

"Why not?" Reece asked.

"Because names have power." Reece nodded. Mac was right, names did have power.

He cocks his head suddenly as he hears the faint sound of the shower in the main bedroom. Checking the oven is on warm he sets a place at the table for Seth and then looks at Mac.

"Are you ready to start rehab? I've got to go into work this afternoon." Mac's lips thin but he nods nevertheless.

"We need to look into getting your teeth fixed as well." Reece says as he moves toward Mac to hand him the crutches he'd moved out of his way when he was cooking.

##########

When Mac falls into bed that night he is exhausted. He'd napped in the afternoon and he was still fucking exhausted. Seth's Reece was a fucking Nazi. And what was with 'the whole body' shit? He only needed his leg fixed as much as was possible. He didn't need to have his whole body rehabilitated.

Running his tongue over his few remaining teeth though, Mac had to admit it would be good to have a full set again. He'd taken to eating mostly mushy stuff or stuff that didn't need a lot of chewing over the last couple of years as he had so few in to actually chew with now.

Rolling awkwardly over in bed Mac pulls a pillow over his head as a faint smack of flesh comes down the hall to him along with a moan. Fuck it all to hell. His cock hardened and he flinched. Ignoring it as he'd never done before he thinks of the last time he and Reggie had been together.

He reaches for the wooden box and pulls it to him from the bedside table. Opening it he looks at the contents. Takes them out and opens them, brushes his fingers over them. He remembers their plan that had fallen by the wayside. But he'd kept his promise. He'd never gone for her.

Though he'd wanted to, every time he'd wanted to, every his body had craved her he'd taken a hit. It was no wonder, he craved her like the drugs he'd taken as a substitute. The women he'd taken and left over the years flit through his mind in a never-ending kaleidoscope of blurred faces. They all only ever had one face anyway.

Reggie's.

And as her face, her face as he'd seen it last when he'd dropped her back in Los Angeles years ago comes to the forefront of his mind, everything stops.

She was his. He would get her back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We go back in time at the beginning of this chapter to when Devon first makes his intentions known to Reggie.

Reggie breathed in raggedly. She closed her eyes and looked away from Devon as he loomed over her. She felt the cold knife blade slice through her underwear along her hip, then the other hip and Devon gently pulled it away.

Her whole body was awash in a fine trembling. It was barely discernible but she felt it in the marrow of her bones. For the first time in years her mind felt clear. She ignored the knife slicing each shoulder of her bra strap and then the material between the cups being cut as well.

But when the knife moves into her line of sight as Devon teases her with it, running over her body, threatening to stick her with it, slice off a nipple her trembling worsens.

"You sick fuck." Her words are muffled. Not understandable due to the gag and material inside her mouth as well. But her tone is unmistakable. Devon stops playing with the knife as he kneels in between her spread legs.

Watching his eyes narrow Reggie quakes on the inside. He holds up the knife and then looks at her like a child. Tears fill his eyes and fall down his cheeks. He drops the knife over the side of the bed and she hears it fall with a dull thump.

But then he takes himself out of his underwear and begins to stroke. Reggie feels herself dry up, fear tightens all her muscles despite the trembling. "No." She says into the gag.

Devon just smiles. "No." She says again. But she is ignored. He lies down on her and without warning pushes his hardness inside. He tears her, she can feel it immediately. And like that she is back in the cave.

Mac's face is above her, gas mask pushed up on his head. But then it's not Mac's face, it's someone else's face. And then Devon is there and then Mac's face is back.

Mac.

_Mac._

**_Mac._ **

Reggie remembers. She remembers Mac. "Mac." She says through the gag. Devon doesn't understand her of course. How could he? He had never understood her.

Not like Mac.

Pain suddenly tears through her lower extremities as Devon begins to fuck her harder. "No." She says again behind the gag. This is wrong. Devon is her brother. _Mac is your brother too_. A little voice says in her head.

 _No, he's not. Not like Devon_. She says back to the voice.

And he's not. They might share DNA but that's all. Reggie groans in protest as she feels wetness releasing inside her. Mac won't like that, he'll kill Devon. She doesn't know how she knows that, but she knows it in the very centre of her heart.

As that thought takes root inside her Devon pulls back. Reggie keeps her face turned away from him. "Now who is the man?" Devon mutters.

 _Mac is the man you fucktard, he never needed to tie me down_. It's a good thing Devon can't hear her thoughts. Because what she had in her mind now? Well that didn't bear thinking about.

Reggie snorts to herself as she tries to distance herself from Devon. She walks back down memory lane ending up at the first time she'd seen Mac.

She'd been ten. He'd been, her brow furrowed trying to remember their age difference. Eight years older. It finally came to her. He was eighteen, her mother had said he'd just graduated high school and he was nice.

That was a lie.

But he'd been nice to her. That year, the year she'd met him he'd mainly only said hi and bye. But she remembered he'd bought her an ice cream when he'd seen her in town one day. She'd been with her mother and they'd stopped for petrol, he'd been buying cigarettes.

_Reggie had looked at the ice creams and he'd told her to pick her favourite. So she had and he'd bought it for her. She remembered him handing it to her._

_"_ _There you go sweetheart, don't let it drip now." He'd spoken with a grin that had her heart going pitter patter._

_"_ _Thank you." She'd been polite as her mother had taught her. She'd also been taught not to speak to strangers but her mother had already said he was nice when she'd introduced him a few weeks ago. Surely that meant it was okay to talk to Mac?_

_"_ _You've got a weird name." She'd said not realising he could take it as an insult. He hadn't though._

_"_ _My mother's mother's maiden name." He'd answered. "Know what I mean by that?" Reggie shook her head. "Well, what I mean is that it's my grandmother's last name before she got married. Understand now?" He'd been patient._

_Reggie frowned as she worked it out in her head. "Yeah, your mama's mother. It was her name when she was born?" She clarified and Mac nodded. "Well, what's your whole name then?" She questioned._

_He'd paused as he'd looked at her while licking his own ice cream. Then, performing a mock bow he'd spoken. "MacQuade Johnson at your service sweetheart." Reggie had squirmed in pleasure at being called sweetheart again._

_Her mother had chosen that moment to leave the store. "Regina, let's go." She'd nodded at Mac without speaking and Mac had nodded back. He'd looked down at Reggie and winked causing her to blush furiously. "Be seeing you sweetheart."_

_When he'd turned and walked to his own beat up red truck, he hadn't looked back._

A stinging slap on her face brings her back to the present. "You pay attention to me Regina!" Devon nearly screeched at her. She looked over at him with dead eyes. She was bound and gagged and he'd just raped her. And that wasn't enough, she still had to give him her attention.

Reggie fought down the shudder at the look on Devon's face. Once wasn't going to be enough. She could tell. His eyes, widening and blinking rapidly at her caused a shiver up and down her spine. Devon leaned down to her and before she knew what he was doing he'd kissed her over her gag. His tongue somehow wound into her mouth.

She tried to bite it but the gag wouldn't let her. But he knew what she'd tried to do. Rearing back Devon slapped her again. "You try to pull that shit and I'll dope you up." Reggie froze. He'd done that for the better part of ten years. It was the one thing she had to avoid at all costs.

She ignores the little voice in her head telling her to accept the oblivion. No, she couldn't allow that. She wouldn't allow that. She needed to survive. She had to find Mac. She had to. Reining herself in Reggie closed her eyes and ignored Devon.

When he slapped her again, he slapped her breast before grabbing and pinching her nipple harshly. Reggie's eyes opened in shock. Devon was staring down at her. "You don't look away from me until I say so, you got that little sister?" Her skin crawling at the crazy in his eyes, Reggie nodded.

Mac, she remembered him, she had to find a way to get to him. To make sure he was okay. She knew he wasn't, her memory was still Swiss cheese but she remembered some things. One of them that he'd been using when she'd last seen him and he'd been high when she'd seen him at the bar.

How could she have forgotten him? How? _Devon made you forget him._ Her inner voice answers her.

 _Devon has to die._ She answered her inner voice.

Reggie looks up into Devon's eyes even as she thinks of Mac. When Devon moves into the bathroom Reggie takes advantage to look down at her body.

It was still there, Mac's framed bite mark. Reggie breathed in deeply. She could do this, it was just the same as last time. Or nearly. Her eyes widened as Walter opened the door and came in. He looked his fill at Reggie but didn't touch.

"Son, I'm going to need your help with a few things. You'll need to make sure Regina is secured, we can't have her getting loose." Devon came out and leaned a shoulder on the door jamb.

"When do you need me?" He wiped his hands on a towel as he glanced over at Reggie.

"In the morning, I'll pick you up at seven." Walter clasped his shoulder. "It's good to have you back."

Devon drew Walter in for a hug. "It's good to be back Dad." Reggie's stomach roiled as they hugged. She'd seen them do it before, but seeing them do it again just brought home to her how truly screwed her family, her blood was.

Closing her eyes, getting a reprieve while Devon was occupied Reggie let her mind drift. She remembered…what exactly? She focused on Mac and remembered as much about him as she could. It could only help.

His dark eyes, dark hair. The moles on his face, two of them, just above his upper lip and beside a nostril. The weird combination homemade and professional tattoos. The way he always bit his thumb nail, but never any other nail. The way he gnawed on his lips when he was thinking.

The way he looked at her. The way he called her pretty girl.

A sob tries to work its way out but Reggie won't allow it, she can't allow it. She has to get through this without being doped up. She has to get to Mac, back to Mac? She can't remember.

 _Okay, you can do this. You can do this. Just think of the last thing you remember about him, when was the last time you spoke to him?_ She questioned herself as Walter and Devon talk in the background.

 _When he dropped me off at the police station in Los Angeles_. Reggie answered herself. _We went through our plan, we kissed and I left. I haven't seen him since. He kept his promise not to come for me. No matter how many times I wanted him to, he kept his promise. And now when I need him, he's not coming!_

Her mind fractures on that thought and before she realises what she is doing she suddenly convulses on the bed in a roiling, screaming mass of crazy.

"Mac!" She screams behind the cloth in her mouth and the gag keeping it there. "Mac!" Over and over she screams his name.

He doesn't answer. And he doesn't come for her.

A pinprick on her arm has her sliding into oblivion.

##########

Walter watches as Regina becomes unconscious. She was a pretty girl, not beautiful, but pretty. She was a throwback to some wetback origins with her olive skin. But her eyes came from somewhere else altogether. They were light coloured and sometimes Walter swore they looked straight into his soul. Well, they would if he had one. Souls didn't exist. Walter didn't believe in God or the Devil.

To his own detriment.

But, she was going to be a liability. He knew it, could sense it in the very marrow of his bones. Devon was not going to want to get rid or her or put her back into a loony bin or let her go. He sighed as he lamented Mac's being gone. Despite their antagonistic relationship, Mac would've taken care of Regina in a heartbeat with a smile on his face all the while.

Frowning Walter looks at the bite mark on her pelvis. He takes a step closer to the bed and stares down at it. Devon was right, she had a frame inked around it. An ornate black and purple frame. Delicately done, all the more complicated for its delicacy. It was truly exquisite.

And fucked up.

Something ticks away in the back of Walter's brain, almost like a clock ticking down. But he doesn't wonder on it. Too much of his life feels like that these days. He smacks the back of Devon's head sharply when he growls at him for running a finger over the tattoo.

"She's my daughter, like you're my son. You may fuck her, but she's my blood too boy. You got that?" His accent deepened as he spoke to Devon. He watched Devon flinch away from him and nearly sighed. Mac would never have flinched. Mac would have spit in his face and then some possibly. "Relax, your mother would come back to life and murder me if I touched her like that. But you keep it in your pants when you have obligations to uphold boy. And don't you forget it."

Giving a last glance at the scar and tattoo Walter walked back outside. He shut the door behind him and stood there silently as he listened to Devon's footsteps cross the room and lock it behind him. "Good boy." He said quietly.

"Night Dad." Devon answered him before Walter heard his steps move away.

##########

Devon hated wearing a mask when he cooked. He hated working in a cave. He hated the chemical smell that surrounded him now and seeped into his pores. He hated cooking.

He took off the mask and inhaled then coughed. He grabbed up Regina from where she was laying on a mattress he'd brought in from Mac's old house and dragged her outside with him.

The day is waning and Devon breathes in deeply.

He loved the desert, he loved Cainville, he loved working here in Utah with his father. He loved the woman cowering at his feet. He looked down and held himself in. He wanted to kick some life back into her, kick something back into her.

Ever since she'd woken from that first drugged sleep she'd been docile as a cow. He'd hit, kicked, slapped and yelled at her to no avail. Regina followed his orders, did as she was told, but she rarely responded to him.

Sometimes Devon found himself almost flinching from her. She was quiet, she'd always been quiet. Now though, she was scary. No he nearly smacked himself in the head at that thought. Regina, his baby sister did _not_ scare him.

She was his little sister, she _didn't_ scare him. He took care of her, he took her. She was his. Devon ignored the little voice in his head that told him she wasn't his, she'd never been his. She'd belonged to someone else long before he'd fucked her.

And she had the mark to prove it. He looked down at her lying there in the dirt at his feet. She was filthy. He couldn't find it in him to wash her more than once or twice a week. He himself was fastidious, showered twice a day.

Regina however hadn't even told him she'd started menstruating, he'd only found out when he'd seen her bleeding. Devon had thought she didn't menstruate because of the birth control shots. And it was only then he'd realised she was probably due for one.

Walter knew a doctor. So Devon had cleaned her up one night a couple of weeks back and dragged her to the doctor in New Mexico. He'd checked her out, given him some specific pills for certain issues, given her a shot and told him when to bring her back.

He'd also said to be careful, that she was in danger of sustaining permanent internal damage from his treatment of her. If she did, she'd become sterile. He didn't fucking care, couldn't stand children, they were all little cunts.

The doctor however had refused to take care of her childbearing capability permanently. He'd looked at Devon with something akin to disgust but he'd taken the cash he'd been given, counted it carefully and told him when to bring her back for her next shot.

And Devon had. Looking up into the twilight sky Devon felt the winter wind cooling the sweat on his skin. Autumn was nearly gone. He looked out over the canyon and thought of Mac. Wondered how long he'd lain there dead with Terra before the coyotes had come and taken care of them.

Torn the flesh from his bones, cracked them for the marrow. How had he tasted? Like the drugs Walter said he'd been practically eating instead of food? Had they noticed a difference in his flesh to Terra's flesh? Terra who had taken Mac over the cliff with her instead of allowing him to just have his fun and let her go.

He had intended to rape her, that much Devon knew. He could have told Mac Terra was a wildcat, that she had a sense of justice a mile wide and wouldn't have taken his shit on her worst day.

But he'd thought it funnier to let Mac figure it out for himself. He was glad he was dead.

Devon himself might be Walter's favourite but Walter had had a soft spot for Mac. Despite his crazy. Or because of his crazy more like it.

Shaking his head Devon dragged Regina up and pulled her back inside the cave. He had work to do.

##########

Reggie lolled on the mattress, it was her favourite place to be because it smelled like Mac. Despite or in spite of what Devon did to her on it, the mattress was her one tangible link to Mac. And it still smelled like him.

She was glad Devon didn't wash her very much because it meant that she smelled a little like Mac most of the time. She was already grieving for the day that her smell alone seeped into the mattress and she didn't smell like Mac anymore.

It had taken weeks for her to figure out that Devon and Walter thought he was dead. And it had taken more weeks for her to realise he wasn't coming for her. Would never come for her.

But she couldn't shake the feeling that he was still alive. But if he was alive, where was he? Reggie knew she was his property, he'd trained her to believe that, now that she had some memory she knew it to be true.

If he was alive though, where was he? She spent most days ferreting through her Swiss cheese memory for whatever fragments of Mac she could remember. It was slow and painstaking work but thankfully it kept her occupied.

Devon she was sure thought she was off with the fairies, but she wasn't. She was just…remembering.

And she was waiting.

Because something recently told her Mac was coming for her. She wasn't sure when, or how even. But she felt that he would come. A smile flits across her face as she thinks of how he's going to peel the skin from Devon's bones.

Not paying attention to Reggie, Devon nevertheless shivers as his spine suddenly crawls in dread. He whips around quickly only to see nothing there. He glances down at Regina and frowns at her. She's looking at him, or through him rather. Just like always.

But for a second he was sure he'd seen something in her eyes.

Something that reminded him of Mac.

Shaking off his crazy thoughts Devon turns his back on his sister and gets back to work. He doesn't see her look him over with disdain as he does so. He doesn't see Reggie's mouth move and form a word, just one word.

Mac.

##########

_Flashback…_

_"_ _Ready?" Mac asks as he stares at a naked Reggie. He's holding her left hand and she's bracing her right on his shoulder._

_"_ _Yes, I'm…." Without hesitation Mac twists her fingers before she can say the word ready and Reggie moans in pain. She's still naked which is stupid but she knew he'd want to take her one more time. And he did._

_Her moan of pain was a turn on, she knew it and he knew it and he liked that he didn't need to hide it with his girl._

_Letting go of Reggie's broken fingers Mac slides his hands around her waist and pulls her down on to his lap. She straddles him, moving her hips as he manhandles his cock and holds it steady for her to slide down on him._

_"_ _So good." Reggie murmurs as Mac fucks her long and slow. She clenches down on him and he moans for her, making her smile. Winding her good arm around Mac Reggie simply holds on, allowing Mac to do with her what he will._

_It'll be good, she knows that. Whatever Mac does to her, whatever scar he gives her, whatever bruise he bestows, she loves each and every one. "Miss you already." She says softly as his fingers dig into her hips, scratching her, marking her as always._

_A grunt is her only answer, but she didn't expect anything else._

_Her head rolls back on her neck, her eyes close and she feels breath on her chest and then those filthy wet lips begin to torture her. Scraping her skin, biting and sucking her, and then they move up to her neck, the opposite side of where her scar is and they bite and suck marks on her there too._

_Knowing Devon will see them and go crazy. It makes Reggie smile as she curls her head into Mac's neck and lets him have his way with her._

_Trusting him to keep hold of her, she lets her right hand slide down to her clit and begins to flick at it. She winces at the burn, Mac had not been gentle with it and it was as bruised as the rest of her. She wouldn't have it any other way._

_"_ _Slower." He orders her as he stills inside her and lowers his head to her shoulder to watch her play with herself. "Slower." He says again to her._

_Moaning Reggie clenches down on Mac, holding him inside her even as she obeys his wishes and stops flicking at her clit. Beginning to simply circle it lightly with her fingers, over and over, slow and steady, barely touching it really._

_More like grazing it, and somehow that's worse, makes her hotter. Moaning again she feels herself clenching on Mac even harder even as she feels she's getting wetter with every soft barely there glide._

_"_ _Oh God." She says softly. "Hold me." Reggie murmurs as she tries to hold Mac with her left hand unsuccessfully. His arms wind tighter around her, no longer scratching her._

_His, "Always," Is muffled against the side of her neck. Pulling her in tightly Mac keeps looking down at her fingers playing over her clit even as he begins to thrust again. Slow as well, jerks of his hips that somehow seem to make more of an impact for their short jabs._

_Reggie's heart soars at his word, though she knows better than to mention it. "Close." She answers instead and Mack holds her closer to him and lifts his head._

_"_ _Look at me when you come, don't shut your eyes." He orders again. Reggie bites her lip and Mac's eyes follow her movements. Then he leans up and simply takes her lip himself and begins to gnaw at it for her, breaking the skin, bruising it badly._

_He licks at the blood and then kisses her thoroughly, pushing the blood back into her mouth where they share it and swallow it. Keeping on stroking her clit slowly Reggie leans back this time, trusting Mac to keep hold of her, always like he'd said._

_When she comes it's a slow tightening of muscles and tendons. And then an equally slow release, bleeding from one high to the next as Mac orders her to keep stroking herself. She feels herself spasming on his cock and Mac's answering jerks inside her followed by a regular pulsing telling her he's come as well._

_All the while, through sheer force of will she keeps her eyes open and on Mac's own mercurial ones as she comes. She knows her love for him is showing and she doesn't care. She's his as he says. She knows that now._

_As Mac slows and stops thrusting inside her Reggie stops moving her fingers on her clit and drops her own head, resting her forehead on Mac's, she just stares at him._

_Staring back at her Mac eventually smiles, showing red stained teeth as Reggie knows her own must be. Feeling him soften and slip out of her she slowly stands with him helping to steady her._

_Mac helps her dress, she refuses to shower or clean herself up, she wants to take his smell with her, keep it with her for as long as possible. They dress her fingers crudely as she would do if she was on her own on the street._

_And then the journey back begins. They travel slow, below the speed limit. Mac is in no hurry to return her to Devon and she's not in any hurry to get there. When they're back in Los Angeles, Reggie directs Mac to where she used to live._

_"_ _I can't believe he sold it." She mutters as she stares at the house in the evening._

_"_ _He's right about you not needing the space. Plus where he is now, it's closer to the nuthouse." Mac answers her murmured words. "I'll wait, stay and follow you back, make sure the fucker picks you up." He says to Reggie. She nods at him and then before she knows what she's doing she surges forward claiming his lips one last time._

_"_ _Don't you come for me MacQuade Johnson, you wait." She orders him and then she pushes out of the passenger door leaving Mac behind. She refuses to look at him as she walks up the block to her old house and tries the front door, praying it's locked. It is._

_And then she takes a deep breath, holds it and bangs on the door. She allows the tears to come then, tears for her parents, for Mac and for herself. Tears of fear, fury and pain and heartache. Lowering her eyes she lets them fall, the drops dotting her chest and thin tank top as she shivers in the cool of the night._

_When the door opens she allows her confusion to show. "Where's my mother? Who are you?" She questions._

_And so it begins._

_##########_

_Reggie sits at the police station. She carefully pulls on the sweatshirt from lost and found and winces silently when the on call doctor splints her fingers and tells her she needs x-rays. She tries to be as vague as possible. It's not hard. Mac had told her to take some meth, that they'd test her blood and they had._

_He'd given her another pill too, said it'd make her vague and kind of dopey, which it had and that it wasn't something the police would normally test for. He'd refused to give her Rohypnol. Said he wanted her to remember, not like Devon who was trying to get her to forget. He'd said that she was strong enough to remember and not crack under the strain._

_She was his and no property of his was going to be a fucking weakling. He's slapped her with those words, bruising her face that last day like they'd decided on. And he'd fucked her again. And Reggie had loved the way he'd made her hurt._

_It was something only he'd be able to do, she knew that, even at eighteen she recognised Mac as the other half of her. The worse half sure, but together they were whole._

##########

Devon decides to wash Reggie that night. For some reason it was important that he did that though he takes a while to realise why. She'd reminded him of Mac today and that wouldn't do. He ignores his pulse beating a little faster at the thought of his dead half-brother.

He was Walter's favourite, he knew it and Mac had known it, had often commented on it with a sneer. And it was something Devon usually basked in, the knowledge that he was someone's favourite. But these days he wasn't' sure.

Did Walter love him? Yes, he knew he did. But Walter had also had some feelings for Mac. What Devon wasn't sure. But he'd had something. And he'd appreciated Mac's willingness to get his hands dirty. Devon freely admitted he liked to play, but only when he was in the mood, he wasn't a killing machine like Mac was, wouldn't blindly take an order to get rid of someone like Mac had.

And he didn't like cleaning up his messes, Mac had always done that and he'd never complained, at least to Devon's face. But sometimes, when Devon had finished playing and contacted Walter who had sent Mac he was sure sometimes, just sometimes he'd seen revulsion in Mac's face, just the faintest flicker as he glanced at Devon and then away again.

Having said that though, Devon wasn't a druggie, never had been, never would be. And that could not be overstated. He remembers Mac's house suddenly and that Walter had asked him some time ago to clean it out. With a sigh he gets Regina out of the shower and dries her off.

Debating for several minutes he finally decides to take her along, he can get her to sit in the kitchen while he cleans out any drugs and those stupid charcoal drawings he'd always done. Dressing her he takes up a pair of leg cuffs and grabs her arm. They walk toward Mac's house in the dark of the full moon.

Looking up at it Devon realises that Mac's been gone and he's been back and with Reggie nearly four months now, winter was here, the air was cold at night and getting colder.

At the back door, Devon unlocks it and steps inside Mac's domain. His filth. At least he finds garbage bags under the sink, putting them down he kneels and cuffs Regina's legs, she can walk but not run. Then he re-locks the back door and pockets the keys.

With a sigh he begins in the kitchen, gathering up the tins and drawings and utensils, there was no way they could be cleaned. He bags everything and sets it by the back door. He's going to have to drive over here another time to pick everything up and take it to the dump.

In the bedroom he loses track of Regina. Ferreting through Mac's clothes, Devon doesn't know what to do with them. For now he decides to leave them on the bed, but he strips it of its linens first, such as they are. He hears a soft clank behind him and turns to see Regina in the doorway looking around.

Unlike him, her nose doesn't wrinkle at the smell. Looking around she shuffles in and sits on the bed. Devon frowns before deciding to let her stay. Then he heads through the rest of the house. There wasn't much else thankfully. Bathroom last, there was green algae everywhere, mold on the ceiling and the window was painted shut.

Shrugging Devon empties it of toiletries and leaves it as is. Walter can deal pay someone to deal with it if needed. That left the few personal belongings in the bedroom. Looking around Devon absently notices Regina has curled up on the bed in a ball, her eyes are closed and she's breathing deeply and evenly.

Mistakenly thinking she's asleep he leaves her be and checks the floors and wardrobe where she'd hidden from Mac that night, as if he wouldn't find her in the wardrobe. Snorting at her stupidity, Devon pauses as his foot kicks something under the bed.

Bending down he shoves a hand under the bed and comes back with a beaten up cigar box. Opening it he freezes. Panties, pink panties. Child size. And two photographs. He remembered when they were taken. A lifetime ago. Reggie when she'd been his annoying sister, not Regina his lover.

Laughing ant mugging at the camera. His mother had put them on the fridge at their house here that summer he knew. The summer Regina had been ten.

"Motherfucker." Devon whispers as he stares at evidence of Mac's awareness of Regina.

His Regina. Not Mac's, _his_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note re updates for guest readers. I'm updating this story every 2-3 weeks.

Mac grins as he bares his teeth. Moving his head from side to side and then up and down he inspects them. Opening his jaw he runs his tongue along the underside of his top ones.

They weren't blinding white which he appreciated, that would look fucking stupid. But, he had teeth again.

He massages his jaw a little from where the last bottom ones had been screwed in. He was thankful he didn't have dentures like some old fuck.

He was going to owe Seth for the rest of his fucking life for this. And for Reece and what Reece was now away doing. Shaking his head Mac steps into the shower. Soaping himself down, he finds himself thinking of Reggie.

Wondering if Reece will see her. Hoping he'll be okay, he knows Walter and Devon won't recognise him, but Walter is cunning like the coyotes they think ate his dead rotting corpse. He could very well sense something or take a plain dislike to Reece and decide to do away with him for the hell of it.

Mac was nervous.

It was a feeling he didn't like.

Stepping out of the shower he dried off and dressed after spraying on some deodorant.

Leaving his room he walks down the hall to the kitchen and begins breakfast. Reece had obtained a promise from him to look after Seth as he did. Outside the bedroom anyway. Shaking his head Mac set about making breakfast.

He cocks his head when he hears the shower and begins to plate up. He's setting Seth's serve on the table at his usual place when he walks in wearing a pair of sweatpants and nothing else.

Mac catches sight of his tattoo as he turns to the fridge for the juice. It's a long spiral, down the back of his spine, starting at his neck and going down to his butt crack.

It was high quality work, Mac remembers the night they'd gotten inked together, they had both been off their faces, with alcohol and the sheer joy of being together again. He'd gotten the demon angel's on his back and Seth had gotten the spiraling vine. What most people couldn't see in the vine were the dates inked within the leaves.

Mac had lost count of how many he'd counted over the last few months. Like he'd lost count of how many bodies he'd dumped lime on over the years. But Seth? Seth had kept track of each one of his with a date inked into his back.

The sun rises as they eat, they rarely talk to each other, there is no need. After a week or so of settling in and Mac coming to terms with Seth and Reece and Seth getting used to Mac being around in his private space, they'd settled into a mostly silent relationship.

Which is not to say they didn't communicate. They just didn't communicate verbally.

Cleaning up, Mac grabs a couple of bottles of water and heads out to the back deck. Reece has set up an exercise area for him there. He shivers in the winter air but doesn't rug up. He'll be sweating soon enough.

He spends the morning going through his paces, rehabilitating himself as much as he can. After several months he can walk without a limp, jog and even run a little. But he can never take his legs strength for granted again. He can never take for granted that his leg will be able to support him without fail.

Could be worse he figures, he could be dead and Reggie would spend the rest of her life with Devon for however the fuck long that would be. Mac knew that Devon would grow tired of her eventually. Especially if she'd slipped back to that nearly mute state she'd been in for years.

More likely though, Walter would tire of her first and arrange an accident.

Continuing to lift weights, stretch and strength train Mac's mind flits over the land to Cainville. He thinks of Reece and hopes like fucking hell that he gets in and out without any trouble. Seth will make him wish he was dead if something happened to his property.

Just like Mac will make Devon and Walter pay for fucking with his own.

##########

Seth watches Mac from the backdoor. He is focused on his physical rehab but Seth can tell his mind is with Reggie as he calls her, never Regina. He'd not told Reece her name until one day when Reece had been bullying him into pushing himself just that bit more. Trying to get Mac to push himself more, to improve more, get faster, get stronger, become more.

And just when Seth had thought he'd need to intervene right before he'd thought Mac was going to murder Reece with his bare hands Mac had spilled. And Reece had listened, he'd soaked Mac and his mind and it's morass of psychosis up, just like he soaked Seth's up.

 _Reggie,_ Mac had said. _Her name is Reggie_. Present tense.

And from that moment Reece had used Reggie at every turn. Every time Mac nearly quit, every time he spat quite literally in Reece's face, Reece would invoke Reggie's name and Mac would push, pull or prod himself just that bit further.

Seth was in awe of a woman he'd never met.

They were fucked if she was dead he knew. Because if Mac didn't have a purpose when he finally let him loose, hell would reign.

And all of Cainville would burn.

Grimacing at his melodramatic thoughts, Seth nevertheless knew they were right. Mac would burn the entire freaking town if his property was dead.

##########

Mac knew Seth was watching him but he ignored it. He kept up with the regimen that Reece had set for him. Reece wanted him to keep to it for another week and then he'd begin to cut it, to see what Mac needed to do daily to keep up the strength and flexibility he'd been able to regain. Mac felt anger every time he had to pause to check his leg would support him.

If he'd just fucking killed Devon and his playthings when he'd wanted, then he'd be alive and well and whole. He wouldn't have fucking nerve and muscle damage.

He ignores the voice that tells him he wouldn't be clean, off cigarettes and alcohol and drugs and have a new set of teeth. He grits said teeth as he pushes through his last exercises of the day, using the pain in his jaw to keep himself going.

Thinking of how he's going to deal with Devon and Walter has a smile coast over his face. He can tell it unnerves Seth to a degree which is saying something.

"Gonna drink their blood." He says conversationally as he finally finishes his workout and cools down via stretching.

Seth snorts. "I have no doubt Elvira." Mac laughs. He's grown used to Seth calling him by his childhood nickname. He hasn't had his hair long since his mother died and Walter had shorn it off.

It had been the only thing she'd defied Walther with, keeping Mac's dark hair long. It had hung straight and shiny down to the middle of his back, parted in the middle. Seth had nicknamed him Elvira years ago when she'd still been alive.

And it was what he'd called Mac when they'd met up again.

He felt Seth move back inside the house and go about his weekend routine. Mac finished stretching and sat, looking out at the desert as he drank his water. He finished his bottle and went inside drinking his second one.

Grabbing a third one he headed for another shower. Seth had been in his room and taken his laundry, his bed had been stripped. Mac remade it with the sheets sitting on the foot and then showered his sweat off.

In the shower he thinks again of Reggie, wonders what she's doing, if she's even aware of anything anymore.

##########

Devon wiped down the bar, he was managing it today for his father while he did some business out of town, he was ahead in meth orders thank God. The less time he spent in that cave the better. He was sure he was getting a vitamin D deficiency.

Making a note to get some supplements, Devon checked the kegs and Regina as well. She was sitting silently at the end of the bar near the office. Staring out the window, she hadn't moved in over an hour.

Shaking his head Devon subtly checked the floor to make sure she hadn't peed herself. She was prone to that, never moving on her own anymore. If Devon had left her sitting there with her head on the bar and her hands dangling, that would be where she would stay.

It doesn't register that Regina is doing it deliberately, that it is her way of defying him.

He felt odd keeping her out in the open, though she'd been nothing but docile since that first night. Even when he took her, she lay there passively.

Devon felt strange though, keeping her untethered in public.

But like Walter had said, he couldn't sit her handcuffed in the bar and he didn't go anywhere without her. She was his, no matter the evidence to the contrary he'd found at Mac's. No way was that bite mark Mac's.

No way.

Still, a small kernel of doubt remained. And it was something he'd never spoken to Walter about when he spoke to him about everything else. But Devon was thinking that the bite mark had to go.

Soon.

"What can I get you?" He asks the stranger who wanders in, looking around as they let their eyes adjust to the darkness of the bar.

"Whatever's on tap'll be fine thanks." Devon looks at the man, he's youngish, older than college age though. And he's pretty. He can't think of any other way to describe him, bronzed skin, straight nose, strong jaw and dark eyes with long straight black hair loosely pulled back from his face.

The fingers that hand him a note and tell him to keep the change are almost impossibly long and slender but the forearms show veins confirming strength. The way the man looks at Devon though his glance is for but a fraction of a second leaves him feeling like he's been thoroughly dissected and then some.

Shaking it off Devon moves down the bar serving other customer's. The man drinks his beer and leaves so quietly that Devon doesn't even realise he's gone until he walks back down the bar to check Regina and sees the empty glass.

He frowned wondering how such a large man had moved so quietly before he put him out of his mind.

##########

Walter pulls up at the back of the bar. It was still open, music was still blasting from the jukebox. He sighed as he stepped down out of his truck. It had been a rough few days.

Stepping inside to the kitchen he watches his cook prepare the basic food he served. She nodded to him but said nothing. Walter nodded back but kept silent as well.

Out in the bar he looked at Regina, she was sitting and staring out at the now dark window. Walter sighed again, he'd bet she'd been sitting and staring all day except for when Devon moved her.

She made him uneasy. And Walter didn't care to be made uneasy. He remembered that night months ago now, Regina had still been in the motel, it hadn't been two weeks Walter thought.

But he remembered that night like it was yesterday. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up again as he thought about the way he'd felt the cold brush of air as he'd walked to the cabin and the scream that had split the stillness when he'd knocked and opened the door.

Devon had stood there pulling up his jeans, Regina had sat up and turned, she'd looked not at Walter, but through him, past him almost and her eyes had widened. She'd looked back down at herself and then up and Devon and she had screamed.

One long, blood-curdling scream that had given both he and Devon goose bumps before she had simply collapsed back on the bed. Walter would never forget what he had seen in her eyes.

He thinks it was then that he knew, really knew, that Regina had known Mac. Before the cave, before Devon had even become fixated on her maybe.

Whatever it was, that night Walter realised Regina and Mac had history.

It was then that he knew he'd have to eventually get rid of her.

But not until Devon was starting to tire of her. If he did it now, when Devon was still obsessed with her, he'd lose Devon as well. That he couldn't allow.

Walter and Devon work the bar together and Walter sends him out occasionally to collect glasses when the waitress gets overworked.

As they're slowing down for the night a man comes in, tall and dark, Walter watches him take a look around and then head for the bar, there's a stool open toward but not next to Regina.

He jerks his head at Walter but Devon pushes past him before he can move to serve him. "Hey man, back again? Same as last time?" Walter frowns. Something about him was setting off warning bells.

"Yes, same again thanks." The man passes a note, says for Devon to keep the change and begins to sip his beer.

His eyes catch Walters and they stare through him almost for a few seconds before he moves on. It was such a small thing Walter told himself he'd imagined it. Shaking his head he returns to serving. When he looks up a little later the empty glass is sitting there and the man is gone.

Shaking his head again, Walter forgets him.

##########

Reece watches the bar. He'd booked into the camping ground outside town and had hiked back after dark making sure no one saw him leave the grounds.

He'd seen Reggie twice now and he was worried. He hadn't been able to get a look at her eyes. He needed to see her eyes to see whether there was any awareness left in her at all.

Mac had been specific. Watch, learn, don't touch or make any waves. Reece took his words to heart which was why he hadn't stayed in the bar to talk to Devon.

Walter had had an awareness of him that was beyond normal. Reece felt Walter's soul reach out and touch his and had barely been able to contain a shiver as he'd looked at then past him.

And he'd thought Mac was a devil.

Shoving all of that aside Reece waited. He hadn't been able to see last night whether Devon kept Reggie at the motel or whether he took her home.

Settling down patiently behind some rocks Reece waited.

Eventually the bar began to empty, a sheriff's cruiser came and parked, a strong-looking man in uniform got out and sauntered into the bar and the closed sign went up.

Waiting some more, Reece saw him come out and get in his cruiser and move on out. Then the outside lights went off and the interior bar lights.

Walter and Devon stepped out with Reggie, she was walking because Devon pushed her. Reece noted that the moment Devon's arm stopped pushing, Reggie stopped walking. Using his binoculars Reece watched, trying to get a decent look at her face.

Nothing. Dammit.

He could see her face in nothing but shadows. He shook off a shudder as his mind tried to tell him old Indian tales about faceless demons who walked like men but had nothing formless above their shoulders. That was not Mac's Reggie.

Reece backs away when he hears the muted conversation between Devon and Walter.

"When are you going to start cooking again?"

"Probably Monday or Tuesday, you don't need me tomorrow do you?" Devon asked Walter as he shoved Regina none too gently down the steps. He was used to having to push her now, he did it with out thought, but stairs pissed him off.

"No son, you go and take a day to yourself. Get some sun, you're looking pale." Walter answered as he locked up the bar. Devon watched him and shook his head. He'd known he was getting a vitamin D deficiency God dammit.

"Thanks Dad, I'll get the rest of Mac's place cleaned out too, take his shit to the dump, we should just burn it to the ground, lands worth more without that place on it." Devon speaks as he steps after Regina and takes her arm.

He looks back as he sees Walter looking off into the distance. He watches as Walter shakes himself and moves to his own truck.

"Maybe Devon, but for now just clean it up and lock it and bring me the keys." Walter looks over at him. And the look on his face reminds Devon for a few seconds of Mac.

Shaking it off he nods curtly and opens his truck door, He boosts Regina inside and climbs in after her. She's sitting half sprawled over the seat, another thing Devon is used to.

Setting her to rights he starts up his truck, flicks on the lights and waves to his father without further conversation as he shoves the truck in gear, grinding them as he does. He fucking hated stick shifts.

As he drives away he glances over at Regina, making sure she's still upright, she had a tendency to allow herself to fall sideways when in a vehicle as it turned.

Devon's eyebrows rose in surprise, she was staring out the window, not straight ahead.

"You see something baby?" He asked her not expecting an answer.

"Mac." Regina answered him without turning her head away from the window.

Devon's eyebrows lowered now as anger bloomed in him. That fucking bite mark had to go. It was like it was a conduit between them, like Mac fucking called to her from beyond the grave.

Tomorrow, he'd finish cleaning Mac's sty of a house and then, in that same house he'd tie Regina down and get rid of that bite mark and then burn the fucking place to the ground.

He was past caring what Walter thought when it came to Mac.

##########

Reece faded away and hiked back to the campground. He thought as he went. He could go to the Ashton place tonight, but he knew where they'd be tomorrow. He glanced over at the distant lights as he hiked.

Walter had sensed him, he was sure of it. So he had no more time. Recce took Mac's warning to heart. If Walter had sensed him, his time was up. When Reece got back to the campground, he packed up his tent, quiet and silent, then he used the facilities one more time and got into his truck and pulled out.

On the side of the road he pulled over and got out his tracking device. He switched it on and followed it, engaging the four-wheel-drive when he left the blacktop as he travelled to Mac's secret cave.

He did as instructed and pulled the desert coloured camouflage netting over his truck and then taking up the tracker he followed it again until he had reached the cave. Switching it off, he pulled out a black flashlight and then followed the arrows to the cave itself.

Settling down, Reece set his watch alarm and went to sleep.

When he woke with the alarm, he washed and cleaned his teeth and then left the cave taking his gear with him. He didn't know if he'd be back.

Reece looked at the maps that Mac had drawn him. He settled on parking his truck in a small copse of trees a few miles from the Ashton place.

Moving in on foot, he moved not to the Ashton place, but Mac's old place. He could smell the fetid stench from nearly a mile away. But as he drew closer Reece realised it wasn't Mac's place, but the Ashton place that had the stench.

His lips thinning, Reece quartered the area. He'd have to get close to see Regina, assuming Devon brought her along, and Reece was sure he would.

He feels his cellphone vibrate in his back pocket as he finally settles on where to watch.

"Yeah?" He answers softly, his voice would carry out here.

"The native is getting restless." Seth greets him. Reece can tell he's not angry though.

"I bet, I'll be coming back sometime today, MacQuade is right about the old man."

A hiss comes down the phone. "He's onto you?" Seth's voice is concerned now.

"No, but he's…wary." Reece decides on after a pause. He turns as he hears a door open and shut and then an engine start.

"Got to go, I'll call back by sundown or you need to come looking for me. Right now I'm at Mac's. Devon has been ordered to finish cleaning it out today and I've got a bad feeling." Reece hangs up on Seth's goodbye and moves to where he's decided to watch from.

He dusts a branch behind him as he goes to obliterate his footprints. Settling in to wait, he watches Devon reverse up the back door and then switch the truck engine off. As he'd thought, Regina is in the vehicle as well.

Devon pulls her out and takes her inside. Then the doors and window all get opened and Devon begins to cart shit out. Bags of trash, lots paper. Some small furniture.

Reece laughs silently to himself as he hears Devon's cussing a blue streak at Mac. He'd bet it was a sty in there, given how Mac was when he'd been brought to Arizona.

Through it all though, he doesn't see Reggie.

Reece waits as Devon fills the truck, pushes Reggie back out the door and into the truck and then takes off. He leaves the house open.

Standing up, Reece drags the branch with him as he moves to the house. He hides the branch under the house and moves up the steps like a wraith. He wanders the rooms and touches what is left. He felt sorrow for Mac even though he knew it was a useless emotion.

He is reminded of how feral Seth had been when they'd met and come together. In the bedroom though Reece stops. The bedside table has knives on it. Sharp-looking, almost surgical ones. And the bed has rope coiled at each corner. And medical supplies.

Shit. He takes out his phone and dials quickly. "Get me Mac." He says when Seth answers.

"What?" Mac is on the phone within seconds.

"I'm in your place, Devon looks like he's set up to do some sort of surgery, what are my options?" Reece asks as he cocks his head. "You've got about thirty seconds, I can hear his truck, they're coming back."

"Take them to the cave. We're on our way." The phone goes dead.

Reece looks around and then up. He moves to the spot where the manhole in the ceiling is exposed and then flexes and jumps. His hands catch the edges and he hauls himself up quickly.

He's just settled comfortably where he can see when Devon pushes Reggie inside the bedroom.

And Reece can see her eyes. She's blank, but not gone he thinks. He sees her eyes flash with anger though the rest of her face doesn't move. She lets her inertia move her forward and stop naturally.

Standing with her hands docilely by her side she looks down at the ground. Hiding her eyes from Devon.

Devon pushes her again toward the bed and then turns her around. He quickly and efficiently peels off her clothes.

Reece winces when he sees Reggie's body. Devon has not been gentle.

Not that Mac would be either, but there was a difference between marks given with consent than those put on without.

"Fucking sick of looking at it. Enough is enough. Mac? Mac?" Devon mutters. "Not having it, taking him away from you, going to burn this place down to the ground when I've finished with you today. You won't have anything left to remember him by."

Reece's disquiet deepens. He was right to call home.

"Think I haven't realised that he put that on you?" Devon asks Reggie now as he gets in her face. He pushes her down on the bed and slaps something on her pelvis.

Squinting Reece makes out some kind of tattoo, but nothing else. Did Mac get her tattooed?

He watches as Devon ties Reggie down, that was good for him too, it meant he didn't have to worry about her running, or mistakenly attacking him, thinking he was going to do her damage too.

One thing after that flashing look he didn't have to worry about was Stockholm Syndrome.

Waiting for his chance, Reece almost misses it. He'd tuned out Devon's rambling and thus didn't realise what his intent was until he'd picked up a knife and brandished it.

Just as Devon set it to Reggie's skin and she came out of her self-induced stupor and screamed at him, Reece swung from the roof.

##########

Reggie screamed as Devon set the knife to her flesh and started to cut into her. She screamed again even as Devon backhanded her.

Ears ringing she watched the man she remembered seeing the reflection of in the bar yesterday afternoon and last night. He dropped out of the ceiling and slid up to Devon without him even realising. Then he wrapped his arms around Devon's neck as he sliced further into her skin.

Watching Reggie felt both terror and exultation as Devon dropped the knife and clawed at the arms around his neck. She could tell that the man had a good grasp on him though and was squeezing tightly.

After a few minutes Devon's body became limp. The man let him fall and then stepped over him to the leftover rope on the floor beside the bedside table.

He trussed Devon up and then lifted him with a small grunt and took him out of the room.

Reggie struggled to understand what had just happened. Devon had been incapacitated. That much she knew.

But was the man her savior or her death? She shook her head but the ringing continued. She'd been having it periodically since Devon had beaten her a few months ago for ignoring him.

At her second visit to the doctor he'd said Devon had damaged her eardrums permanently. She was stuck with the ringing. Tinnitus it was called. Another nail in Devon's coffin when Mac returned Reggie knew.

Time passed and she couldn't help her bladder letting go.

Reggie had tried to free herself, rubbing her wrists raw in the process. She can tell from the shadows that it's late afternoon.

Then she hears footsteps. The man comes in with two bulging duffel bags. And…a beauty case?

"Hey, I'm Reece. I'm…a friend of Mac's. He says hesitantly after a pause.

"Mac's dead." Reggie answers him, testing him.

He grins at her and she is shocked to realise how beautiful he is. When she'd seen him in the window reflection at the bar, she'd really only noticed his hair and strong jaw line.

"Sure about that?" He asks her as he steps forward. Reggie frowns at him. "I mean, did you see his dead body? Check for a pulse?" He sits on the side of the bed and watches Reggie carefully.

"He fell, he couldn't have survived the fall, he couldn't." She says. But now she wonders. She'd never felt like Mac was truly gone.

"Let's get you cleaned up, then we'll decide where we're going." Reece reaches forward and stops when he sees her raw wrist. "Sorry about that, I wanted to get Devon away while he was still unconscious. I couldn't take time to reassure you that I'm not here to hurt you." Reggie believed him.

She didn't know why or how, but she did. She stayed on the bed, not moving as Reece released her. She watched as he looked at her wound.

Reece looked at her bite mark, the frame tattooed around it and the knife cut. Devon had been going to literally slice it out of Reggie's flesh. He was glad he'd been here.

Mac would have gone absolutely postal if Devon had been able to eradicate the bite mark, his bite mark. Reece fingered it lightly and Reggie flinched.

"Sorry, I've seen Mac's, he never mentioned you had one too." He murmurs as he pulls back. "I'll dress the wound when you've had a shower. I hope this place still has water, don't think it'll be hot though." He says. He turns away and then turns back. "Are you with me Reggie, are you okay to get around and such? We don't have much time. I need to get us out of here before dark."

Reggie swallows as she watches the man. She can trust him, instinct tells her this. But Mac is also screaming at her in her head telling her to trust no one but him. "How do I know you know Mac?"

"I know you share a father, I know Mac bought you from your mother in return for your mother's life." Reece speaks softly as he backs toward the bathroom. Reggie sits up, rubbing her wrists as she moves to the side of the bed.

It's enough to get her into the shower, which as Reece said is cold. Reggie doesn't care. She takes the beauty case Reece had brought her, noting it was her mother's old one. And he'd filled it with stuff from her house.

She scrubs herself until she is raw and then she washes her hair twice. Then she shaves everything she can and cleans her teeth three times. As she finishes, she begins to slowly feel human again. Her teeth are chattering and her skin is blue by the time she's finished.

A full set of winter clothes have been placed on Mac's bed when she comes out in a towel Reece had also provided from home. Reggie is thankful she had managed to keep her sanity this time.

All these months, she'd been right. Mac had been alive. But he hadn't come himself. A small piece of anger sprouts in her heart. And Reggie begins to nurture it.

Her heart leaps in her throat as she smells the fuel. Then Reece is standing in the doorway with a gas can in his hand. "I hope you're ready, we need to leave now. I'm timing the fire with the sunset."

Heart settling at the realisation that Reece wasn't going to burn her as well Reggie nods.

"I want to burn my place too." She says mulishly. Reece purses his lips for a few seconds before he nods. He can tell she's set, it would be useless to argue with her.

"We need to be quick." He answers as he passes her the gas can. Reggie takes it and drenches the bedroom as Reece takes out the beauty case. They walk to her place and scrounge more fuel.

A little later Reggie waits as Reece goes back to Mac's and at his distant shout Reggie lights the Molotov cocktail he'd made and throws it after calling on every piece of resentment and anger toward Devon and Walter and yes, her mother too.

It lands on the cement porch and bursts into flame. And the rest of the house catches quickly after it.

Turning, Reggie walks away. She doesn't look back as she moves toward the figure she can see silhouetted against the flames from Mac's place.

Reece gestures for her to walk and she follows him. Neither of them speak. Eventually they get to a truck and she gets in the passenger seat, slumping as she realises just how tired and exhausted she is. It's been too long since she'd done any exercise at all.

Starting the engine Reece pulls away, he moves onto the black top and then after a while he moves off it again. Then he stops the vehicle. Reggie gets out when he does. They still haven't spoken again.

She watches mutely as Reece covers the truck in a net of some kind. Then he stops and digs in his back pocket. He pulls out a phone and presses a button. He turns and looks at Reggie as he does so.

"Put him on." He says when someone obviously answers.

There is a pause. "Yeah." Reece says and he hands the phone to Reggie.

Reggie feels her heart begin to beat fast, her breath catches as she takes the phone in a hand that is suddenly trembling.

Reece smiles and nods at her.

She puts the phone to her ear. "Hello?" She whispers.

"Hey Pretty Girl."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra special thanks to Peachylana and Elle_Gardner for helping me through my spastic attacks over this chapter, even if I didn't take your advice, you still helped settle MY animal.

Mac sits impotently as he watches the landscape fly by. Seth isn't speeding and as much as Mac wished he would he doesn't hassle him about it. Instead he fingers the now burnished box in his lap and remembers Reggie. At ten, twelve, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.

The last time he'd seen her before he'd handed her back to Devon. He flips the lid on the box and smiles at what's inside. "Do you think she'll even remember that?" Seth asks him out of the blue.

"Don't know, don't care. It's real, that's all that matters." He answers as he shuts the box and goes back to staring out the window.

"You thought of what you're going to do to them?" Seth asks now.

"Yeah." Mac doesn't elaborate.

"Need a hand?" Seth offers.

The grin that flits across Mac's face stirs the darkest of dark places inside Seth and he grins back. "Maybe." Is all he says though.

It's a little after dark and they're still a few hours away from Cainville when Seth's phone rings. He pulls over and answers and then passes it to Mac.

Swallowing Mac takes it without hesitation. He needs to know.

But the voice on the other end of the line isn't Reece.

"Hello?"

"Hey Pretty Girl." Its all Mac can think to say. A gasp answers him followed by heavy disjointed breathing.

"Mac." Her voice is soft, she's almost whispering as if she's afraid that he's not real.

"It's me, go with Reece, I'm on my way." He says bluntly. He hears her breathe some more.

Then, "Okay." Mac hears the phone be passed to Reece and wind whistles over the air.

"We're at the cave, we'll wait here for you." Reece hangs up.

"Fucker." Mac mutters as he hangs up himself.

"Didn't say goodbye huh? He never does." Seth laughs as he puts the truck in gear and gets underway again.

"You should teach him some manners." Mac says as he turns to stare out the window again, staring at a blackness that can't even begin to match the blackness of his own soul. His statement just makes Seth laugh more.

"Yeah right, this coming from a murdering, psychopathic jackass on the way to take down his father and brother."

"Oh fuck off. You'd have taken him down years ago if you thought I'd let you get away with it." Mac says of Walter.

Seth stops laughing. "True enough Elvira, true enough."

Mac looks out the window as Seth drives. His mind a turmoil. Reggie was safe, that he knew. But that was just the beginning.

As the darkness wraps around he and Seth again, Mac's mind flits back to the past, the closer he comes to Cainville, the further back into the past his mind delves.

Seth's calling him Elvira led him down a dark and twisted memory lane full of blood, gore, guts and spinal cords as he returns to his family home and when he'd finally cut his hair.

Or had it cut for him.

_"_ _Get off me, don't you fucking touch me!" Mac tried with all his might to push Walter and the scissors away from him. But he is just not strong enough._

_"_ _No boy, your mother is gone, she can't stop me anymore, it's time you had a man's haircut, not some sissy girly hair!" Walter returned as he held Mac down._

_The first snip of the scissors broke Mac's heart. He was leaving his mother behind. He knew it. Walter was changing him as surely as his mother was dead. He was taking over._

_First his mother, then Seth. Walter was making sure Mac had no one but him._

_Mac sniffled as he stilled and watched his long dark hair fall to the kitchen floor._

_His heart hardened, solidified and calcified with each lock of hair that fell in front of him._

_Standing stoically, Mac let Walter finish with his hair and run a hand through it, scattering the leftover hair every which way. It was shorn so short it he couldn't even get a grip on it._

_"_ _That's better boy, look like a man now, not some sissy, girly kid."_

_Walter sighed and put the scissors down as he sat down. "Go and shower for the funeral."_

_And that was another thing, Walter had run Seth out of town before his mothers, Seth's sister's funeral. Beaten him half to death and ordered him away from his son._

_Mac's eyes narrowed and in a flash he turned, grabbed the scissors, flipped them open and held a pointed tip to Walter's jugular._

_"_ _Mac, son…you don't want to do that." Walter spoke to him softly, carefully, as if he was speaking to a retarded child._

_But Mac was no child, not any longer. "You touch me again old man and I'll slit your throat and leave you for the coyotes to feed on out in the canyon, see if I don't." He leaned in, pressing the point of the scissors into Walter's skin._

_Not enough to break the skin and kill him now, just enough to get his threat across._

_That he was serious, that he meant business._

_That he would follow through on his promise._

_Walter stared up at Mac, his son. He knew without a doubt Mac was not exaggerating. He would kill Walter if he touched him again without his permission._

_So he nodded and swore to himself he would not ever, ever capitulate to Mac like this again. Mange, negotiate, compromise yes, but capitulate?_

_Never._

Mac shakes his head free of his memories. Memories were not what he needed now. Now he needed knowledge and calm to carry through with something he'd waited to do for years. He needed to plan and achieve his goal.

He needed to retrieve his property, no questions asked.

##########

Walter watches the fire engine roar past with a frown. When his new deputy's cruiser flies into the parking lot of the bar and the deputy slams out of the vehicle at a dead run Walter knows that Devon has set fire to Mac's place.

He calls the waitress over and tells her to close the kitchen and get the cook out to man the bar. It's not too busy, they'll manage between them for a Sunday night.

He meets the deputy at the door.

"Places are on fire." The deputy says as he does a one-eighty and heads back to his cruiser. He stops Walter as he gets into his own truck. "Devon and Regina are missing. I can't hide this Walter."

Walter stops and watches as the deputy gets back into his own cruiser and tears out of the parking lot. He curses to himself as he gets in his own truck and follows.

"What the hell have you done?" He asks of his absent son as he drives out to his old place and the Ashton place.

Once he's there he stands back and watches them both burn. Arson is a given with the smell of fuel heavy on the air. A shout goes up and the shed at the Ashton place goes up. There had been bikes in there and their fuel tanks had just blown. The van Devon never used anymore exploded too.

Watching his own house go up like kindling Walter feels tears prick his eyes. He had so many memories in that place. He'd been born in the front room. His father had died in the kitchen. His mother in the bedroom.

Breathing them back he hawks a globule of spit on the ground. Sentiment was useless now. Where the hell was Devon?

"No bodies?" He asked the fire chief.

"No, no truck, he drives a navy one, correct?" The new chief looks at him, his eyes are glowing with the flickering light of the still going fire. Mac's place has been contained, but not Devon's.

"Yes, a navy single cab. Uh, two thousand model." Walter answers. He cannot for the life of him remember the license plate however.

Hours later both blazes have been contained. Rubberneckers have driven off.

Taking a breath, Walter finally gives in and gets in his own truck. He drives back to the bar on autopilot and parks. The bar is still open which surprises him until he sees the time.

It's just gone ten in the evening. The fire's had been started at sundown. Smart, sly smart Walter thinks.

He has no idea where Devon is, he didn't have a great deal of cash. Walter had kept a close eye on his finances over the years. Most of it was in trust and an allowance was doled out. Devon and Regina wouldn't access the principle until they reached thirty respectively.

Walter takes over at the bar again, answering questions as he serves customers. Better to get that over and done with, the longer he put off talking about it, the more stupid the gossip would get.

Sighing Walter looks at the bar, he's tempted to leave it until the morning but knows from experience it's easier if he cleans it tonight. So he gathers up the glasses, puts them in the dishwasher to be taken out in the morning. Then he puts up the chairs and begins to mop the floors. He's just finished wiping down the tables and the bar when the front door opens.

He'd forgotten to lock the door, he realised. Not something he'd usually forget, but with the fires tonight and Devon and Regina being gone, his mind was understandably scattered.

"We're closed sorry." He says, thickening his accent deliberately.

"Do I look like I care?" The voice stops Walter in his tracks.

Looking up he sees two shadows at the door. They've fanned out, one standing either side of the entrance and as he watches, one slithers over to the other exit past the toilets.

Walter thinks about backing out through the office or kitchen but knows he won't get far. His mind is working at light speed.

"You're alive son? How?" He's both happy and pissed his voice quavers. Happy because it makes him seem weak when he's truly not. And pissed because it had quavered without his permission.

"That would be me." The other shadow speaks and then meanders forward. Sliding through the shadows in the room like a ghost.

And he was a ghost. Walter very nearly gasped when he saw the face of Mac's companion.

There was no thought in his brain to curse the quaver in his voice this time. "Seth, boy." He whispered.

A snort from Mac answered him instead of Seth. "Boy, fucking typical."

Walter watched Seth look over at Mac. "Your show Elvira." He said no more, never spoke to Walter, after their eyes had connected and once Walter had recognised him, Seth had broken eye contact and not regained it.

Walter however, couldn't stop looking at Seth. He was an older version of Mac, yes there were differences, but not that many.

Staring, Walter cut his eyes to Mac as he walked forward. His gait was slow, measured. Walter watched him. Mac was alive.

A shudder ripped down his spine however as he realised this wasn't his Mac, this Mac was different. He was…more.

Much more. Too much more. Walter's brain tried to tell him not to move but he couldn't help it, his fight or flight response took over and he moved with what he tried to tell himself was fast speed.

It didn't even come close. Seth leapt and Walter no more had his palm around the grip of the revolver he kept behind the bar when it was wrenched from his hand.

Seth's other hand gripped his hair, pulling it harshly by the ponytail. "Slowed down a bit over the years haven't you old man?" He questioned with an amused laugh.

Walter felt tears of shock and yes, pain running down his face. He couldn't speak. It had been too long since he'd been on the receiving end, he'd forgotten the sheer shock of being hit, being held against his will.

Yet it was something he thought nothing of ordering. Mac, Devon, his new deputy. His mind is frantic, running in smaller and smaller circles as he tries and fails to find an escape route.

Nothing. He knows he has nothing. That doesn't stop him from trying to resist as Seth slowly pulls his arm up, his own hand clasping Walter's around the butt of the gun. When it's pinned, barrel first under Walter's chin he stops.

"God, you have no idea how many times I've dreamed of you in this position." He whispers in Walter's ear now.

"Do it, boy. Get it over with." Walter waits to die now, he knows he will, he expects to.

A soft whisper of a laugh reaches him. "Ain't his call…Dad." Walter feels his bladder release. Mac had not called him father in too many years to count. That he was doing so now meant surely that Walter was going to die.

His only choice was to try and force Mac's hand. Or Seth's. The option is taken away however when Walter feels a prick on his shoulder. His legs turn to jelly as consciousness recedes.

##########

Mac breathes deeply as he gets out of Seth's pick-up. They throw another net over it and Seth manhandles Walter onto the sled they'd brought along. Mac takes up the other with supplies.

Seth had taken his vague ideas and put them together into a cohesive plan.

One careful step at a time Mac began to make his way to the cave entrance. To his past.

And to his future.

He could feel his heart beating strongly, faster with each methodical step. A part of him, the part that could scent Reggie's smell wanted to run to her.

Silently cursing his leg that wouldn't allow him to do so Mac led the way.

"You ready to see her?" Seth asks him out of the blue. They're just inside the entrance to the cave, moving carefully with their burdens and black lights. Mac knew the way blindfolded, but Seth didn't.

"No." Mac answered him bluntly. He wasn't ready, would never be ready. The only thing he knew was that she remembered him now.

What Reggie remembered though, was another thing.

"Figured out where you're going to go? What you're going to do?" Seth asked another question, slightly breathless from dragging Walter's dead weight.

"Yeah, got it covered." Mac answers simply. He'd thought of little else these past months.

"Does your plan include your woman?" Seth prods curiously.

"She's mine." Mac answers simply. Where he went Reggie would go. She was his.

"And if she has other ideas?" Seth pushes him. He knows Mac, he doesn't know Reggie. And he doesn't want Mac to expect one thing of her only to have her turn around and be or do something else leaving him high and dry.

Because he personally did not need to mop up anymore messes in his life.

"She won't." Mac is absolute.

Seth questions him no more.

##########

Reggie feels jittery. The darkness is pressing down on her psyche, she knows she'd not being smothered but she can't help feeling that way. The smell doesn't help.

"What is it?" She asks finally, coughing a little as she breathes it in.

"Decomposition." Reece answers her as he looks over at her. He's playing a game of solitaire.

Waiting.

They're both waiting for Mac.

Reece has dosed Devon up twice since they'd arrived at the cave and Reggie had just stared at him both times as he'd come to.

Finishing off her bottle of water Reggie stands and stretches. She thinks on Reece's answer. Decomposition. Decomposing bodies, she had no doubt.

Feeling her pelvis, Reggie rang her hand over her scar and tattoo along with the tape where Reece had put in a few stitches when they'd gotten to the cave. Devon hadn't managed to damage her bite or its tattooed frame.

"Thank you, for rescuing me. For helping me, us." She says as she turns to Reece, looking him fully in the eyes for the first time.

His teeth flashed at her. "You're welcome Reggie."

Reggie sighed. And then she smiled. "You're the first person to call me Reggie in years you know." Reece frowned at her and she elaborated. "Devon, Walter and the other's always called me Regina, I always loved when Mac called me Reggie, he was the only one who kept doing it when I got older. When he didn't call me by his special name that is." She finished up as she looked down at her hands.

She felt so weak, having done little but be raped by Devon over the past several months, she was weak, physically weak. But she felt mentally stronger than she had ever been. She hadn't been this strong since she'd last been with Mac.

"What does he call you then?" Reece continued to look at her as he asked her the question.

"Pretty Girl." The voice that answers is a distance away, but footsteps prove it's coming closer. Reggie feels faint as she stands suddenly, all her blood flowing from her face.

She feels Reece move up behind her. They both stand and wait. It occurs to Reggie that she doesn't know how Reece knows Mac.

Right now though, she is too focused on the sounds coming toward her. She cocks her head and frowns as she realises that there is someone else with Mac. She can hear two sets of footsteps and a dragging sound.

What feels like hours but is only minutes later, she finally begins to see shadows moving, then the shadows form shapes and the shapes become figures.

Mac. And… _Mac_?

Reggie frowns as she realises she's seeing double. Something must be wrong with her. "There are two of you." She says and immediately feels stupid, her first real face-to-face words with Mac are that there are two of him. After how many years?

"No." Reece answers as he steps forward and into the arms of the second Mac. Reggie watches open-mouthed as the second Mac drops the handle of the sled he's pulling and puts his hands on Reece's backside, palming it and pulling it tightly to him.

Their kiss is voracious.

And then the other Mac is standing in front of her. Still and silent, his eyes rake over her slowly. Reggie watches him look at her, his eyes are burning with emotion.

Mac walks around her slowly, his gait steady, there is something off with it but Reggie doesn't ask him, not yet. When he's standing back in front of her again, but closer, his hand suddenly flashes out and grasps her by the back of her neck.

Fingers digging into her, nails scraping, he pulls her inexorably forward. Reggie goes willingly, Mac is her black hole, she will always gravitate to him.

Reggie comes up against his chest and looks up into his dark eyes. Mac's cracked soul shimmers in the depths, Reggie feels her own reach out for him and she lays her head on his chest, breathes him in.

"You smell like lemon." She says after a minute. Mac had never smelled of anything like that in her life. Cigarettes, metal, grease, sweat, fetid breath. But never anything so light as a citrus scent.

A snort is her only answer until Mac's clone speaks. "That would be the washing liquid we use little one." Reggie went to move but Mac's hand on her neck stopped her. So she stayed, wound her arms around his waist and just held onto her home.

Mac held Reggie and half listened to Seth and Reece greet each other. He could tell Seth was close to taking Reece right there in front of them. A groan stopped them all.

Watching Reggie look beyond him to the sled, Mac watched her face grow cold and detached. She looked back at Mac. "I remember you promised never to lie to me." It was a statement.

Mac nodded, he had said that, in Las Vegas nearly ten years ago now. Reggie looked at him and then down at Walter. "Did you bring them both here to get rid of them for good?" Mac nodded again.

Reggie cocked her head to the side as she considered him. Mac was aware Seth and Reece were listening and watching them both closely.

"Don't hide it from me, not like the first time." Is all Reggie says now as she moves to the table and picks up the baseball bat Mac kept there.

Before any of the men realised what she was going to do she swung out with all her might and cracked Walter across the face. Blood spurted as his nose broke and he screamed like a scalded cat. Mac shuddered as his cock leapt to attention.

This was his pretty girl. This fighting, feral warrior in front of him. Before she could swing again though, he grabbed the bat from her, then he turned on the uneven floor carefully and swung it himself, sending Walter back to dreamland as he knew Reggie had meant to do.

He looked at Seth, "Give me a hand to string him up." Seth nodded and Recce stepped back to the table and prepped a syringe as they did so.

When Mac and Seth had finished, Walter had been strung up alongside Devon, both manacled to the ceiling, their legs imprisoned as well.

"They should be naked." Reggie says suddenly. Mac looked at her, his eyes narrowed.

"That how you were kept?" He questioned her quietly as his animal stirred.

"When I was at home, yeah. He liked to look, to watch." She gestured with her chin at Walter and Mac's animal stood and stretched, preened for Reggie as his eyes glittered.

"Then by all means Pretty Girl, get 'em naked." Mac ordered her. Reggie looked at him for an endless second, then she moved to the table and took up the shears he kept there, sharper and stronger than scissors, they cut through denim and other heavy cloth with no trouble. He'd learned that from experience.

The men watched as Reggie stepped up to Devon first, she paused then knelt and took off his boots and socks. Then she methodically cut off his clothes, Mac noticed she did not touch his skin if she could help it and the shears didn't cut him either.

Walter however, was a different story. Reggie pulled off his boots and socks and then carelessly cut his clothes off him. Mac was sure she made sure she cut him each time she used the shears. That he was unconscious didn't seem to matter.

"Your girl sure has a hard on for your daddy." Seth murmured in his ear as he and Reece stood beside him.

"Yeah." Mac answered quietly. He wondered if Walter had raped her too.

"I need to check her, make sure she's okay Reece says she's got a fresh cut on her pelvis."

"What side?" Mac snapped as he jerked around to look at Reece.

When Reece answered him Mac's vision greyed out. "It's okay, it still there." Reece's hand on his forearm grounds him.

Then Reggie is standing in front of him. She looks at him, her eyes roam his face and then she pulls her shirt up and off, steps out of her shoes and undoes her jeans before pushing them down her hips.

Blood boiling Mac examines every scar on her body. She had more now, a fucktonne more. And they were all fresh. His fingers trembled as he reached for her panties and pulled them down, exposed her framed bite mark.

There was a fresh wound to the side of it, but the tattoo and the scar were still there, still intact.

"Motherfucker." Mac cursed. He looked over at Reece, then back at Reggie. "He was gonna carve it off?" He questioned, just to make sure. Reggie nodded.

Reece spoke. "Had it all set up in your old bedroom, which was a sty by the way." Seth laughed and nuzzled Reece's neck and Mac rolled his eyes. He watched Reggie take them in.

"You got a problem with them Pretty Girl?" He asked her, his hand going to her chin, tilting it up so her eyes met his.

"No, just." Her eyes flicked away, over Seth and Reece then back to Mac. "You know them." Mac nodded.

"Pretty Girl, this is Seth, my mother's brother and this is Reece his pretty boy. Seth, this is Reggie." Mac watched as Reggie nodded, he saw her taking in Seth's face, build and then look back at him.

"You're nearly twins, I thought there was something wrong with me."

Mac shook his head. "There will never be anything wrong with you Pretty Girl." Mac watched Reggie lower her eyes and bend down to pick up her clothes.

She wasn't bothered by being naked with Seth and Reece in the same room. Mac didn't know whether that should bother him or not. For now, he decided to let it be.

"Don't get dressed, Seth is a doctor, he needs to take a look at you." Reggie shook her head. "You need to let him." She shook her head again and backed away making Mac frown.

"I'm okay, Devon took me to a doctor over in New Mexico, I went last month, he gave me shots, I'm not pregnant or anything." Her eyes widened as she looked at Mac suddenly, scenting his anger as surely as the son rose every day.

"He fucked you without a rubber?" Mac watched Reggie close her eyes and nod shakily.

"Mac, she had no choice I'm sure." Seth intervened. Trying to save Reggie.

"Do you think I'm that stupid as well?" Mac snapped at Seth. He turned his gaze to Devon, naked and unblemished.

Unlike he and Reggie, Devon carried no scars. His skin was smooth, a little tanned in some places but not too much and it was soft, so very soft. Mac pursed his lips. No fucking way was it going to stay that way.

He closed his eyes for several moments and let his animal settle, he let it purr as he felt Reggie step up to him, winding her arms around his waist and lay her head on his shoulder again.

Mac wound his hand through her hair, pulled on it harshly to move it back so she was looking up at him. "Does it still burn Pretty Girl?" Reggie pulled on her hair as she tried to nod and Mac smiled.

"There's my Pretty Girl." Mac nodded at Seth and he stepped forward as he looked around.

"Okay, Reggie I promise I won't hurt you, but I need to see if you sustained any damage internally. We'll get the table set up and some lights before I take a look at you okay?" He asked in a voice Mac hadn't heard him use since his mother, Seth's sister had been alive.

"I don't need it, the doctor told Devon last time if he kept it up I wouldn't be able to have children, he hasn't stopped." Reggie looked over at Mac. "I don't want you to be different with me, you have to be like we were, promise me."

For the first time since he'd been reunited with her, Mac felt her uncertainty, not weakness but nerves. He glances at Seth. "Let it be for now, we'll take a detour on the way home and visit that doctor."

Seth nodded once and turned to Reggie, "Did you see him make any notes or did he have any charts that pertained to you do you know?"

"Devon paid him not to, but he told me he did, that if I needed them I could get them, he put them under a fake name. He wouldn't let Devon be in the room when he examined me uh," She broke off and grimaced, felt herself flush for the first time years. "Internally, when he examined me internally, he wouldn't let Devon stay in the room."

"Do you know what name?" Seth asked, "Or do you know the name of the doctor?" He asked her quickly, taking advantage of her answering questions as he knew she could clam up at any stage.

"Hernandez, Arturo Hernandez." Reggie answered.

"Okay, we'll definitely take that detour." Seth said as he and Reece stepped back. "We're going to take a little walk, we'll be back in a bit."

Watching, Reggie saw Reece smile and shake his head at Seth who blew him a kiss as he tugged him out of the cave. Reggie listened to their footsteps fade away.

Then she was alone with Mac and an unconscious Walter and Devon.

"What are you going to do with them?" She asked Mac as she stared up at them.

"Not sure, still thinking about it. But I need to show them this." He turned and walked away again, to the sled that had supplies on it. He picked up a polished wooden box and opened it as he brought it back to her.

Reggie looked inside and took out the pictures. They were of her when she was ten, she remembered them and remembered her mother saying that she was sure she'd had more.

"You stole these." She stated as she glanced through them.

"I did." Mac answered equably.

Shaking her head Reggie opened the folded piece of paper and looked at it. Then she folded it back up again and put it carefully in the box. Her eyes caught Mac's. "I remember that day, it was the best day of my life until today."

She watched Mac shake his head as he grinned at her. "You've got new teeth." She realised as he reached for his jaw. Her fingers coasted over the neat goatee he had on his chin and then over his lips, her thumb swept across his bottom lip and he obligingly parted it so she could brush it over his teeth.

"Nice, I'm glad." She stepped back, dropping her hand as she closed the box and set it carefully on the table Mac had brought in years ago. "What's wrong with you, you're moving different from what I remember."

"The fall fucked up my leg." Mac answers as he steps forward, caging Reggie in against the table. She was in a bra and her panties as he'd not let her get dressed assuming Seth was going to look at her.

"You're okay now though?" Reggie asked him inanely, she could feel Mac's animal beginning to stir again, her own animal, an animal she was only just getting to know was stirring as well, scenting Mac, standing and baring her stomach to him submissively.

"I am."

Standing up straight, backed firmly against the table, Reggie looks into Mac's eyes, his rage against the two sleeping men on the other side of the room was banked for now. Their two accomplices were not around.

So Reggie took a stand, stood up for herself, took what she wanted, truly wanted for the first time in longer than she could remember.

"Mac?" She asked as she inhaled deeply, smelling his new smell, lemon and man. She could tell that his usual smell was still there, under the surface, much like Mac himself was under the surface. He'd leashed his animal. And that just wouldn't do. Reggie needed his animal, just as his animal needed Reggie.

Because she had an animal now to. An animal born out of rape, degradation, fear, horror, blood and bone. An animal that clawed and chewed at the reins she held onto tightly, wanting, needing to be free to take all of her pain and suffering out on one person. But Reggie held it at bay, let it coil in and fester.

It's time would come.

"Yes Pretty Girl?" Mac answered, Reggie could feel his cock pushing against her stomach.

"Make me burn, wipe him from my memory." She requested.

Watching Mac carefully, Reggie saw his pupils dilate and his eyelids flutter.

"Yes." He said as he pushed her harder against the table.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra extra special thanks to Peachylana for wading through the unedited version of this chapter to give her opinion and make sure I'm on track with Mac. Sorry to put you through that L.

Mac pushes into Reggie, his cock making a dent in her stomach. He ignores the miniscule part of his brain straining at the thought of what she'd been through, that she'd been touched by Devon.

His eyes flit in Devon's direction as he imagines turning him upside down and nicking, just nicking a small cut in his neck, letting his blood drip slowly out of his body onto the floor.

Death would call to him slowly, so slowly that way.

And making him watch Mac take Reggie. Take her the way only he would ever know she liked to be taken.

A hand slaps his face, sharp and stinging. Snapping his eyes back to Reggie, Mac's own hand snakes out, slapping her in return.

But, "Not yet." Is all she says. No apology, no censure.

That was his Pretty Girl. She was back. Her animal straining forward just as his was

Her hands are unbuttoning his shirt, sliding it off his shoulders and then grasping his t-shirt and pulling it up over his body. Mac is lean now, good diet and endless exercises for rehabilitation both physical and mental have honed his body.

To keep up his strength for his weakened leg it was a regime he'd need to adhere to for the rest of his life.

Rough hands scrape over his skin, catch on his scars and make him shudder. Mac felt their roles reverse. Reggie was the rough one, he was the one being played with.

It wasn't something he was sure he liked.

But still, he lets himself be turned around so his hips are resting on the table and then Reggie kneels and unbuckles his belt. Leaving it still in its loops she unbuttons and unzips Mac's pants.

Standing, she reaches back and unhooks her bra, shrugging it off her shoulders. Mac hisses when he sees her breasts. Devon had fucked them up royally. He knew instinctively Reece hadn't registered how bad they were or he'd have mentioned them and made sure Seth had looked at them immediately.

"Pretty Girl…" He reaches for them, for once in his life not knowing what he was going to say but Reggie interrupts him.

"I know you will. I know you'll make him pay. And I'll watch every second, but now Mac?" She pushes her panties down and off and then steps forward putting her arms around his waist. Her palms are rough on his skin again as she slides them down Mac's ass, under his pants and underwear.

Pulling on his ass cheeks, Reggie brings Mac to her, somehow knowing she needed to be careful of his leg. "Now you need to wipe him from my memory, make me yours. Again and forever. You survived the fall Mac, now help me survive him."

Not looking at Devon, Reggie's hands move and grasp Mac's waist, she pushes on him a little and he reclines on the table.

Shoving aside the boxes and shears and medications, Mac let Reggie push him down.

Watching her as she climbed up on him Mac found himself grinning. She might not be unblemished anymore his Pretty Girl, but she was still his. She hadn't been turned into some vacuous troll as Devon had done with females before.

Shuddering lightly over some of the women he'd disposed of over the last few years for his baby brother on Walter's orders, Mac knew without a doubt that Reggie wasn't and would never be one of them.

"Guess I taught you well enough to begin with girl." He muttered as he felt Reggie push his trousers and underwear down after she got rid of his boots and socks. Twisting on Mac's body, Reggie straddled his thighs, resting her palms on her own thighs.

"To survive?" Reggie doesn't pretend to misunderstand.

"Yeah." Watching his face, Reggie thought of Mac's words. Had he taught her? Or had the instinct always been there? Buried under drugs and nightmares perpetuated by Devon and even Walter to a certain degree.

She remembers half phrases and words and Mac drilling her, pushing her and then withdrawing when she was younger. Long phone conversations, things he'd said. Looking down at him Reggie realised he was right.

"Yes, you did. Now we need to survive together." She says firmly. Almost orders of Mac. An eyebrow cocks and Reggie rolls her eyes in response.

Then, she slides her hands up her thighs, over the inside of them toward her pussy. Shaving herself before she'd left Mac's house with Reece, Reggie had included the hair on her pussy. She was bare for Mac to look his fill. And he did.

His fingers slide up her legs as well and over her lips, tugging on them firmly, letting Reggie know he was there, would be staying awhile. Mac skims his hands up the rest of Reggie's body, stopping on her breasts to palm them, cup them.

But he doesn't stay there, not sure whether he should even touch them until Seth has looked at them. Hooking his hands up and around Reggie's neck, Mac pulls her down to his mouth as he leans up.

They meet halfway.

His mouth takes hers.

Violently.

He hears a moan but doesn't know if it's come from his mouth or Reggie's. Mac tastes blood even as he feels Reggie tear at his lip as he tears at hers. His bruising fingers let go of her neck and his fingernails score welts down her back to grasp her ass.

"Yes, make me burn." Reggie pulls back to whisper. She rises up before Mac can grab her and turns around. Backing down, she straddles his face and looks at him upside down. Mac swallows as he sees her animal waking. His own has woken and is riding him hard, telling him to take, to mark, to claim.

And he can see Reggie's animal is just about to do the same to him. "Do it." She says. His hands reach for Reggie and his head rises as he latches onto her inner thigh with his teeth and gnaws at the skin, breaking it, worrying it with his teeth.

He nearly comes when he hears Reggie moan and he feels her press her thigh into his mouth, ordering him to take more of her. Mark her more.

Reggie moans as she feels Mac tear at her leg. She pushed against his mouth, telling him without words that she wanted, needed what he was doing.

As she felt Mac begin to suck on his bite, drinking her blood, sucking it out of her to take into him again she licked a broad stripe up his cock. Opening her mouth over the head, Reggie sucked him down.

Flavour exploded on her tongue. Salty, bitter, savoury in the extreme. It was Mac in his most base form. Reggie sucked Mac up and down, one hand bracing his cock for her mouth as her tongue flicked at him. Her other hand clasped his balls and fondled them as well.

Feeling wetness smear down her leg as Mac's mouth moves from her thigh to her pussy, Reggie spreads her legs as much as she can and leans down for Mac, Her eyelids flutter as his tongue finds her and begins to work her over.

Laving her clit, flicking at it and his fingers now moving inside her. Pushing down insistently Reggie nips at the tip of Mac's cock, knowing full well it will get him going. Having spent the better part of the last year bringing back the memory of Mac, Reggie remembered how to work his cock.

Whenever Devon had fucked her mouth, she hadn't had his cock in it, it had been Mac's, only and ever Mac's. His cock she had learned so well when they had had their week together in Las Vegas.

The pinch on her other thigh is brutal and she moans into it, again pushing her leg on Mac, telling him without words she wants more. Feeling herself moisten so much she can feel her juices running down her thigh, Reggie feels Mac reach for it and smear it over her bite.

And then Mac is pushing on her, his hands slapping her buttocks as he pushes her down. Moving off his cock with a sloppy popping sound, Reggie obeys Mac and moves further down his body.

"Turn around." His voice is raspy and Reggie feels an answering tremor begin deep inside her. With the table groaning, she gets off it and then turns around and climbs back on. It gives her a chance to settle as well.

Scraping her hand over the bite on her thigh, Reggie smears her blood on Mac's cock as she straddles him. And then she pauses, body hovering, eyes caught with Mac's, they pause and look at each other for an infinitesimal moment.

A moment so brief no one else would see it.

But in that look, that connection, their animals roar.

Sinking down, Reggie throws her head back and moans as she feels Mac's girth stretch her as Devon never could for all his roughness and damage. And his entering her again doesn't make her forget Devon and his rape and torture.

It obliterates it from her memory forever.

Devon ceases to exist in Reggie's eyes.

And that is the worst thing that could ever happen in Devon's mind. Reggie had won, the battle and the war against his attempted possession of her.

Mac groaned as Reggie seated herself on his cock and slid down. "Fuck." He muttered as his hands came to rest on her hips, his thumb cruising over his old mark even as his fingers dug in and gripped harshly.

Watching Reggie sink down and clasp him from the inside out, Mac grinned. No way was she thinking of Devon, he knew she'd be okay. His Pretty Girl was a survivor, not only would she survive, she would triumph.

Watching the lumps of flesh that had once been her gorgeous breasts though brings Mac back to himself. Unable to help it, his eyes cross to Devon again. The pinch on his own nipple brings him back, makes him moan and arch his back as he looks up at Reggie.

Rearing up, one of Mac's hands slide up Reggie's back to her hair where he grips it harshly, pulling her head back so her neck is bared to Mac's voracious mouth.

Opening his jaws, Mac sucks on Reggie's skin, bruising her harshly.

Moaning Reggie pushed her neck into Mac, letting him bruise her, needing him to. Wrapping an arm around his wide shoulders, she pulls him tightly to her.

Ignoring the fact that she can't feel him brushing against her chest on one side, her other hand skates down his torso, flicks at his nipples and then moves down to her clit, where she flicks at it lightly.

Another hand joins hers and Mac slides two fingers over it repeatedly. Then he takes her hand and places it on his hip

Feeling Mac press her palm into his hip, Reggie obeys him and his fingers move back to her clit. She moans a little more as she feels him begin to bring her on faster as he circles his fingers over her clit, teasing her relentlessly.

"Mac." Reggie says. Just his name, nothing more. Nothing more. His answering groan, is felt against her neck and heard in every cell of her body.

His other arm bands around Reggie's waist as she rides him, milking his cock, she is desperate in her need for Mac to come. Reggie needs Mac to come in her, it will absolve the stain of Devon from the inside out.

Feeling Mac's fingers begin to squeeze her clit, Reggie moans again and starts to ride the crest of the orgasm he was causing to tip over her in a tidal wave of Mac-induced pleasure.

Mac thrust his hips up and felt himself pause in the precipice of orgasm even as Reggie crashed and burned around him.

Her skin was scalding to his touch. Flushed and sweating his Pretty Girl blew him out of the water as she clenched down and rotated on him.

Feeling his cock swell and then release inside her depths, Mac sighed as he released her neck from the grip of his teeth. He could taste and smell blood, running his tongue over his teeth he could feel it in his mouth.

Soft lips cruise over the side of his own neck. Mac barely has time to brace before they snap down, quick and nasty, just above his other bite mark.

Pretty Girl fucking worried at his skin like the coyote's Mac knew he'd nearly ended up being breakfast for when he'd fallen in the canyons.

Flinching Mac felt goose bumps prickle along his shoulder and down his arm. His cock jerked in its warm haven and his arms tightened around his property.

Reggie was his, he was back, he had her, he only needed to end Walter and Devon.

Even as the thought landed, Mac's hearing caught soft footfalls heading their way. Pulling on Reggie's hair again, Mac distracts her by taking her mouth with his.

Their tongues stroke each other for several moments and he gets lost in her, forgetting that Seth and Reece were returning.

Reggie stiffens just as Mac becomes aware of them walking inside. They pause, but don't stop or turn around when they see Mac and Reggie.

Seth smirks and Reece rolls his eyes at Seth before he goes over to their supplies. "You want some water to clean up Reggie?"

"Thank you yes." Reggie answers as she pushes lightly on Mac's shoulders. He doesn't let her go though. Reggie turns back to him with a frown. He's not looking at her.

"Seth, get your gear, you need to take a look at her." He says as he looks at Seth, his eyes writhe with shadows and dance with demons.

One glance at them is all Seth can take, he goes to the supplies and takes up his bag. Reece looks at him but doesn't say anything.

"Mac? I told you I was okay, we're seeing the doctor on the way out of here." Reggie says.

Ignoring her, Mac carefully twists his legs to the side and then let's Reggie move her legs down to the ground without him letting her go. She was ready to bolt, he could tell.

Moving his hands to her face, Mac cupped her and pulled her back so he could look into her eyes. He could see the damage lurking in her depths, it would always be there, but that was okay. He could keep it at bay, he knew that.

"You let Seth look at them Reggie." His use of her first name instead of Pretty Girl shocked her enough that he could stand himself and turn her in the cradle of his arms.

Seth didn't look at any part of her body other than her breasts. His curse was as vile as Mac's had been. He tossed a glance at Reece full of condemnation.

"What?" Reece asked as he came to stand beside Seth. His eyes follow Seth's back to Reggie and he sees her breasts for the first time. "Reggie…oh God." He said as he saw what passed for her breasts now.

Reggie closed her eyes as she felt both men staring at her. Her nakedness didn't bother her, she knew Mac wouldn't let her be naked with them if there was any chance of trouble.

But her breasts. She didn't want them to see, But Mac won't let her cover herself. "Mac." She says.

One word. Whispered and broken, it told the men everything.

Reece turned away, giving her the privacy she needed.

Seth set his lips and opened his bag.

Mac slid one arm around her waist, anchoring her in place and the other around her shoulders, his thumb stroked her neck.

"Reece, get the water, let Reggie wash and then I'll take a look at you." Seth said as he caught her eyes. "Don't even think about trying to get out of it Reggie, Mac is right – and I never fucking thought I'd ever say that." Seth groused as he took the water Reece offered and put it on the table.

He and Reece stepped back over to the camp cots and Mac pushed Reggie a step away. He took up the water and the baby wipes Reece had put down as well.

Starting to clean Reggie of their blood and his semen, he let her stand there docilely, knowing full well that it wouldn't last.

He was just hoping she would stay quiet enough to let him clean her and Seth look at her. The more Mac saw of her breasts the more his animal reared and strained against his reins.

Mac shuddered as he felt it crawling inside him, instinctively searching for a way out, to maim and eviscerate Walter and Devon.

Stepping back at last. Mac wiped himself down as he jerked his head at Seth. Reece came with him quietly. Standing within arm's reach. He brought a towel for Mac to dry himself with and a change of clothes.

Mac was used to being naked around both men now after all the poking and prodding they'd done of his body.

Seth slowing pushed Reggie around until she was back on the table. Reece spread a towel over her, covering her from the waist to her knees. "Lights." Seth said and Reece wordlessly brought a few more lanterns over, switching them on and putting them on the table.

Taking out alcohol and wipes, Seth cleaned Reggie's bite on her neck. Beyond a wince, she made no movement. Her eyes looked for Mac and when they found him, they didn't look away.

Coming to stand at her shoulder, Mac looked down at her without touching her as he stooped and pulled his socks and boots back on. Then he braced himself carefully.

Pulling up the towel a little, Seth cleaned the bite in Reggie's thigh as well. "Need to clean your own to Elvira." He mentions of Mac's own bite on his neck.

"I will, you see to her first." Mac's words are soft, but full of steel promise. Seth obeyed.

Glancing at Reggie, he sees her looking at Mac and ignoring him. "Have you lost any sensation?" He asks her as he begins to palpitate her left breast.

"Yes." She answers after Mac orders her to, without elaboration.

"How long ago did he cut it?" He asks now.

"I don't know, I haven't kept track of time, it was still summer." She says, thinking about the answer, trying to unsuccessfully work out a timeframe. "Not long, I hadn't been held long I mean." She finally gave Seth.

"Okay, and do you have sensation in your right?" He asked now as he began to palpitate that one. Palms and fingers moving carefully.

"Some, more than the left." Reggie ignored everything else, focussing only on keeping eye contact with Mac and answering Seth's questions.

This was more than she expected. This was forcing her to think about what had been done to her. What Devon had done to her, to her breasts. She didn't need to think about it, she saw it every day.

Reggie could feel Mac's animal, tearing at him to get free. She knew the time was coming. Her eyes slide across to Walter and Devon. _Their_ time was coming. And she was not sorry.

"What did the doctor say about these?" Seth stepped back and looked at Reggie.

He felt cold sweat dripping down his spine. Her breasts were… Seth shook his head. Who the fuck was he kidding? Reggie didn't even have breasts anymore. Just two misshapen lumps of fat and tissue on her chest.

Not even tissue, keloids mainly. Scar tissue. Angry red and purple scar tissue. Staring at them, Seth knew beyond a doubt that no cosmetic surgeon would be able to fix them. Redesign them yes, do skin grafts yes, maybe even somehow make it look like Reggie had nipples again.

But it wouldn't make a difference. Seth didn't suggest it as he knew that Mac and Reggie would say no. Neither of them seemed to be affected by Reggie's injuries sexually so Seth let no words pass his lips beyond clinical ones.

"Well, from what I can see you've got nerve damage. It might repair itself over time, but I doubt it." He sugar coated nothing. "Obviously your nipples have been cut-off. Your aureole have been scored numerous times as well. All the tissue has been burned and cut. I'm telling you nothing you don't already know Reggie."

Stopping and wiping his brow, Seth's own animal rails against the damage he sees to what he can tell was once a spectacular pair of breasts. "Mac will make him pay Reggie, I promise you." He finishes not knowing what else to say. His Hippocratic oath deserting him in the face of his own animals need to make Devon pay for what he has done to Mac's property.

Though Seth sees Reggie in her own right, she is still Mac's. And Devon needs to pay and pay well.

Reece's arms wind around his waist and his chin rests on his shoulder. "It doesn't define Reggie Seth, she already knows that. What happened to her is no one's fault except those two and you're right Mac will make them pay."

Being who he is, Reece cuts to the heart of the matter. He tugs on Seth. "I need air, keep me company." He walks out again and Seth follows after sharing a long conversational look with Mac who jerks his head in acknowledgement at him.

Mac watches them go. He turns to Reggie and pulls her up and to him again. Hugging her tightly, Mac sheaths his animal for the time being. "Get dressed Pretty Girl, we've got work to do."

##########

Walter feels himself moving jerkily. His mind tries to surface but can't quite manage it. His stomach roils. He finds himself throwing up, the vomit nothing but brown liquid.

Warm and foul-smelling, his stomach heaves it up to push out of his mouth to land on his face and neck.

He can't move to clean himself up and in a small, dark corner of his mind he knows why. But his mind refuses to let the rest of him in on the secret.

And he is cold. Shivering, Walter tries to hug himself but he cannot move. Fading again, he unaccountably finds himself shuddering as he hears muted voices and thinks he recognises one of them.

But that was impossible. Mac was dead.

Wasn't he?

Several hours later, Walter comes to again. This time his body doesn't dip back toward unconsciousness.

He wrinkles his nose at the smell surrounding him. It was in every breath he took, stealing into his lungs like a rancid whore.

Rolling over, Walter manages to push his hands under him and get to his knees, palms flat on a brittle and hard but somehow shifting surface. His knees are being poked with sharp objects too.

Shaking his head Walter opens his eyes. Or he thinks he does. He sees nothing but blackness. Shaking his head again. Walter manages to balance on his knees and bring his hands to his face.

Rubbing his eyes, he opens them again. Still blackness.

Overwhelming blackness, there was a stillness in the air, underneath the smell of death that surrounded him.

Swallowing with difficulty, knowing it was useless, Walter closed and opened his eyes again. His mouth was dry, his throat was dry. And Walter could see nothing.

"Hello?" He called out tentatively. No answer. But a human hand put him here stripped naked, skin stinging. That much he knew.

There are sounds above and then a light flicks on. It lowers toward him slowly, and then when it's above his head, high enough for illumination but still too high for him to grab it stops and swings gently.

"There's a light in front of you, to your right." The voice is familiar but unfamiliar at the same time. Hauntingly so.

"Who are you, why are you doing this to me? I'm just an old man." Walter tries for what usually works.

A soft snicker is his only answer. Though whoever is up there doesn't leave. That much he can tell.

Looking where they say, Walter can make out the shadow of the lantern. He shuffles through the debris on the floor carefully, he's old enough that a broken bone will take too long to heal nowadays.

When he gets to the lantern, he sees several bottles of water, small ones. No food. Switching on the lantern, he picks up a bottle and very nearly drains it, ignoring the tiny screaming part of his brain to ration it because he wouldn't get anymore.

Mac would rescue him.

That thought stopped him mid-swallow. Why would he think that? Mac was dead. And then, like Tinkerbell - whom Walter had always particularly hated for her irritating fey ways around Peter Pan on the few times his wife had managed to coax him to read to Mac before Seth arrived – clarity literally flew into his brain.

Memory exploded in a rush of fear and Walter's insides churned. He had to clench down on himself as his bowel threatened to release this time instead of his bladder again.

Water bottle slipping from his hand to land on the carpet of dried and broken bones, with flesh and ligaments mummified on them Walter stares around himself.

Refuse, he was refuse. Dumped in Mac's playground. He'd always known Mac had a special place. It had never bothered him before to know that he did, Walter had never thought anything of ordering Mac to add to it with Devon's cast-offs or his own when his business needed up-skilling.

But, Walter had never in the deepest recesses of his mind thought that he would become one of Mac's cast-offs.

Scrabbling now, Walter drops to his knees, frantically searching for the water bottle he'd dropped.

Knowing he was going to die down here and accepting it were two different things. His body finds it and his shaking fingers clench on the bottle, spilling more of the precious liquid.

"Mac?" He calls up, voice weak and whispering up the pit walls like a spider spinning its web.

"Mac's unavailable at the moment, would you care to leave a message?" A voice teases back at him.

Walter sinks to his knees as memories engulf him. Seth, Seth was up there.

With Mac.

##########

Devon doesn't stir when he's moved to the table and shackled down on it. Shadows move around him, adjusting things, talking quietly. They all ignore the odd sounds that filter down from deeper in the tunnel.

Reggie purses her lips. She had Mac had argued about Walter. She wanted him dead before he went in the hole.

Mac disagreed, even when he'd explained why, Reggie hadn't agreed. Seth had agreed with her and Reece didn't have an opinion either way. He was detached enough to see both sides of the argument.

Overriding both Reggie and Seth, Mac had bullied them around to his way of thinking but neither of them were happy.

Seth had reported that Walter was awake when he returned and a little later he had begun to call out. Not long, there didn't seem to be any rhythm to his calls, but Reggie didn't trust them either way.

Neither did Seth.

Leaving Devon to his dreams, they all walked away, down the tunnel and outside, before they returned to hell again one final time.

##########

_Flashback…_

_Devon slammed the door to his house and threw his keys on the side table. Cursing all the way he headed to the kitchen where he took out a beer and standing in front of the still open fridge door he popped the top and drank it down._

_He took out a second one, but shut the fridge and moved to the kitchen table this time. Sipping it slowly he picked up the phone he'd left sitting there this morning. The cord dangled down to the floor and across to the counter where the jack was._

_"_ _Hey Dad," He says when it's answered on the other end, "Still no sign of her, she's just disappeared." He rubs his forehead with the beer bottle, rolling it across, trying to cool himself down._

_"_ _I know, she'll probably turn up, I just…didn't think she'd do something like this, she's always been so damn docile unless she's having a nightmare." Continuing to talk to his father Devon drinks his second beer and then stands as he hangs up the phone._

_He throws both bottles in the bin and then moves down the hall to his bedroom and bathroom. Pausing in the bedroom doorway he frowns as unease trickles through him._

_ Sliding a hand across the wall, he flicks on the overhead light without moving further. Looking over the room carefully Devon can see nothing is amiss, nothing is missing, but something has been added.  _

_Feeling ten kinds of stupid he raises his nose and inhales slowly. There was an extra smell in the air, something almost metallic. But nothing else and even as he smelled, it, it faded away to nothing. Shaking his head and telling himself to get the air conditioning checked Devon moves into the shower._

_He doesn't see that in his desk drawer in the bedroom, there is something missing._

_Paperwork is gone._

_ A few days later Devon flops onto his bed, physically and mentally exhausted. Regina had turned up and he'd just gone to pick her up and drop her back at the institution.  _

_It takes him several minutes to figure out that the weird metallic smell is back again. With a sigh he sits up, this time putting on the bedside light._

_ Looking around his room he again sees nothing out of place. Laying back down he closes his eyes and sleeps. He doesn't hear a car start up outside and drive off slowly.  _

_ The next day when he's at his desk he stops and pauses as he sees a drawer half-open. He was sure he'd shut it last time. Remembering the metallic smell Devon opened the drawer and checked the contents. Everything was there, birth certificates, wills, his passport. Regina didn't have one. Deed to the house here and in Cainville. _

_Devon closed the drawer with a snap and grabbed what he needed before he left the house to head over to the institution to see Regina._

_ On the way he works through his speech that he'll give to the judge to get adult guardianship of Regina. _

##########

Shaking his pounding head, Devon frees himself from memories of the past. He smelled the same smell he'd smelled in his house all those years ago which was why he'd dreamed of it.

Greasy and metallic. Both scents together reminded him of Mac now, though they didn't then.

Groaning, Devon went to raise his hand to his aching head. He didn't remember drinking the night before, but he must have. His arm jerks as his wrist is caught. Tugging again, Devon takes several seconds to realise his wrist is imprisoned, as is his other arm, his legs too he discovers when he opens his eyes.

And he is naked. "What the…?" He trailed off as he looked around. He were in a cave. But not the cave where he cooked. This was a different cave, similar smell that made him think of that weird shit back at his home in Los Angeles years ago and an underlying smell that he recognised.

Death, death wafted down the tunnel he could see vaguely outside the entrance to the cave that he was being held in. A second table is off to the side with several things scattered on it, a couple of lamps that are lit, a polished brown box.

That box made Devon frown, it teased a memory loose in his brain. Regina, he'd been cleaning out Mac's house, he'd found another box like that one. But not polished.

With panties, pink panties and pictures of Regina when she'd been ten.

The realisation thunders through Devon's body like an avalanche of ice, cold ice, flowing like it had a mind of its own.

Mac was alive.

And he had taken Regina back from him.

Devon looked around the cave one more time. Then he opened his mouth and howled.

"Reegggiiiinnnnnaaaaaa!" His scream has but an echo of sanity as he realised that Regina wasn't his, had never been his. 

She was and always would be Mac's. 

"Reegggiiiinnnnnaaaaaa!" He screamed again.

His screams go unanswered.


	7. Chapter 7

After the sun rose and bathed the canyon in early morning light Mac centred himself. He could feel Reggie's full-body trembling though he didn't know if it was from anticipation or fear.

Releasing a deep breath, Mac stepped back. "Let's get this shit done, fucker needs to be gone." He says as he turns and steps carefully over the uneven ground to the cave entrance.

Seth stays behind to check on the vehicles and pack some of the gear they'd dragged out. When he left this time, Mac wasn't coming back.

He and Reggie walk side by side with Reece a little ahead of them. When they're a distance inside they can hear Devon's calls. Screams rather.

He is screaming for Reggie, over and over. Walter's more plaintive calls join in every now and then. Reece thought it was interesting that neither of them called to each other though surely they had to hear each other.

He stepped forward, lengthening his stride and the distance between he, Mac and Reggie. Stepping forward, he pauses in the cave's entrance, watching Devon with wide eyes.

"Dude, what the fuck?" He says in shock.

##########

"Bar guy, help me out of here." Devon calls as he stares at the long-haired man he'd spoken to in the bar last time he was there. He frowns, wondering how long ago that was.

The guy comes forward, he's dressed like he was in the bar, hair pulled back loosely, hiking boots, outdoor gear. He stares in concentration at Devon, then at his hands and feet where they're bound.

"Are you into some kind of kinky shit? Am I going to get in trouble because some crazy woman or leather daddy is going to beat the crap out of me if I let you go? This is some sick shit dude."

Devon growls as the guy, ambles, there is no other word for it, over to the table looking for something to help release Devon.

He watches, seething as he picks through stuff on the table. His fingers ghost over the worn wooden box that Devon knew of and then the matching polished one.

They pause on it and the guy slides his fingers over the varnish. "Smooth, he did good work." He mutters and Devon's breath wheezes in his chest.

"Who did good work, what are you talking about?" He demands, voice strident and shrill.

"Mac, he did good work when he polished it. He's good with wood, has a gift with it." The man says casually as he picks up the polished box and brings it forward.

"I expect he'll make his living at it when he settles with his wife." Devon is truly befuddled now.

"What the fuck are you talking about? You're fucking insane! Did you tie me up here? Where is Regina? Reegggiiiinnnnnaaaaaa!" He screams her name again, ignoring the man as he walked forward holding the box.

When Devon runs down again, the man speaks. "Well, the marriage certificate I'm looking at, says that a MacQuade Johnson married one Reggie," He breaks off with a wicked grin, "Sorry, _Regina_ Ashton on…"

Time stopped. Devon knew he needed to breathe, knew he needed to swallow, knew he needed to blink, to process. But nothing worked. Black spots danced in front of his eyes as his vision swam.

Fading out of consciousness he vaguely hears another voice, a voice from the grave. "You are such a sneaky fuck, no wonder Seth keeps you around. Sick bastard." There is…affection in the tone Devon thinks, affection he'd never heard before in his life from the voice. Then, the black spots coalesce into a solid black hole that his consciousness falls into and he passes out.

##########

A delighted peal of laughter sounds in the cave as Reggie watches Devon pass out in shock. "I can't believe he did that." Mac looks at her, she is a combination of amused and disgusted at Devon's lack of backbone.

Shaking his head at the fucked up people he was stuck with these days he is nevertheless smiling as he goes to check Devon's restraints. Fucker will be trying to get free even harder until he can't fight anymore when he wakes up.

Running his eyes over the implements on the table, Mac catalogues what he's got and looks back at Devon. His look is nothing but feral, calculating as he envisages what he will do to Devon. Looking at Devon's pale flesh as it gleams from the nervous sweat he'd sprung up before passing out Mac can't help but grin wider.

That sweat was going to sting him something fierce by the time he was finished. And that gave him an idea. "Salt, leave the salt." He says to Reece from where he's packing up their food supplies.

Setting it out on the table, Mac sees a faint grin on Reece's face as he turns back to his packing. Reggie begins to help him and they talk quietly, getting to know each other Mac realises as he listens absently.

His mind though is really on the dangling toy in front of him from where they'd straightened him back up. Walking carefully to Devon, Mac stands in front of him, just looking for a long time. He doesn't hear Seth return or Reece and Reggie take another load out to the vehicles.

Devon occupies his thoughts in full. And Reggie. And what Devon has done to Reggie. Mind leaping back years, Mac remembers that blur in the other cave the day he'd taken Reggie for the first time. Raped her.

There was no other word for what he'd done and while she hadn't been the first or the last woman Mac had raped, she had been the one he regretted. The only one.

But Mac had never only just raped women, it wasn't all he was.

Registering Seth's heat beside him, Mac waits for him to speak, knowing he's gearing up to from the way he breathes.

"You good with this?" Seth finally speaks.

"Very good." Mac answers as a grin flits over his mouth again, showing his new teeth. Biting on a thumb nail, he catches himself and stops. He's managed to break the habit with Reece's help as he rehabbed Mac's leg.

"Figured out where you're gonna start?" Seth wanders closer to Devon and lifts an eyelid, checking Devon's pupil with a light. "Won't be out long." He mutters as he steps back, standing beside Mac again. Where he belonged, he realised.

He curses Walter again, though silently. And he swears that Walter won't be left to find a way out of the pit Mac had stuck him in. Seth would make sure of that. Mac would just have to eventually suck that one up.

"I have, when Reggie gets back." Mac answers Seth. "Your boy told him we were married, sneaky fucker." There is admiration in his tone.

Seth laughs. "That he is, worth his weight in gold ten times over, never ever a fucking dull moment." He laughs again and catches Mac's amused grin.

Moving over to the table as he hears Reggie's light footfalls returning to the cave, he picks up a thick fishhook and then turns to the entrance, waiting for Reggie to appear.

Mac watches as she stops at the entrance. Her attention though, is focused further down the tunnel. Mac realises she's listening to Walter. Something crosses her face and then she turns and comes inside.

"Reece is packing it up." She says quietly as she comes to stand beside Mac, sliding an arm around his waist and down into the pocket of the cargo pants he's wearing. "He's still out?" She asks incredulously, still disgusted at his lack of spine.

"Yes, he's still out Pretty Girl." Mac answers her as he holds up the fish hook.

Raising an eyebrow Reggie looks at Devon's body. Mac raises a finger and points to where he's going to stick it and she just nods. Moving back to the table, she hitches herself up on it and swings her legs. One hand rests on the old, battered box on the table, the other rests on the still old, but newly polished one.

Her touch is possessive, making Mac's grin widen and crawl across his face as his animal rears and pulls on his reins. Letting it arch its neck and stretch a little, Mac rolls the fishhook between his fingers.

Then, without fanfare or any sign of what he's about to do, Mac steps up to Devon and pinching a nipple he pierces it with the fishhook.

With his animal tearing its reins out of his hands he shoves it through Devon's nipple and pulls on it harshly, waking him with a scream that is music to the ears of everyone in the cave with him.

Reggie finds herself relaxing in a way she doesn't think she has ever been relaxed as Devon literally screamed to consciousness. The end had finally, finally begun.

Seth rolled his neck and stretched his shoulders as his own animal strained to be free and to mire itself in the soon to be spilled blood and guts of Devon.

Reece, coming back down the tunnel stood and breathed deeply. He felt his cock jerk as he realised that what had just begun was going to be finished tonight with he and Seth and that Seth would be animal tonight. Running his hand down his body and stroking his cock, Reece shook his head and shook his arms, girding himself for the pained pleasure he knew was heading his way.

"Did I pierce the muscle?" Mac's voice floated to Seth over his own rising endorphins. Swallowing, Seth stepped up beside Mac and inspected Devon's new jewellery.

Picking it up from where Mac had let it dangle, he ignored Devon's pleading screams and tugged on it, eliciting another scream of pain. Not even bothering to stop himself, his hand snakes out and slaps Devon's face harshly. "Shut the fuck up, be a man for once in your fucking miserable life."

It's a useless demand but it makes him feel better. "No, you didn't pierce the muscle. Do the next one now." Seth hands Mac another fishhook and he takes it, still grinning maniacally.

"No, please Mac, no, please…" Devon breaks off with another scream as Mac ignores him and pulls on his second nipple before he pierces it too. Feeling his back arch in pain, Devon lets himself scream again, and then again because he can.

The three people in the room ignore him. He watches Regina, even as he shrinks away from the Mac clone as he inspects Devon's second fishhook to make sure it hasn't pierced the muscle as well.

"Regina, help me…" Devon trails off as her glimmering eyes fly up to him. There is nothing in them, they're pits of nothing, no feeling, not even hatred is in her eyes.

And that is not on. "I fucked her you know Mac, She liked it, she screamed and pleaded for more, for more of my come, she begged me to come all over her and rub it into her skin, she liked to wear my smell and nothing else." He spits the words, feeling each one of them to be true.

But that is the nature of his psychosis, Regina is his, whatever Devon wants, Regina wants. Regina lives to serve Devon, not for any other reason.

"Why did you fuck up her breasts then, if she loves you so much boy?" Mac asked him.

"Don't call me boy, I'm not your boy!" Devon screamed at Mac now, spittle flying though the dank air of the cave.

"But you are his boy…boy." The Mac clone speaks.

Devon interrupts before he can continue. "Regina, tell them!" He demands, nothing in his subconscious is making a dent in his brain.

The shrieking warnings of it to tell him to shut up, take a breath and think, none of it registers in his active brain at all.

And then, with an almost audible popping sound, Devon's remaining thread of sanity breaks and his brain floats through an impasse of blood and guts and gore, all of it looking like the image from his deepest darkest nightmare.

An image of Mac is at the heart of it all.

"Why didn't you die in the fall? You fucking fell of the cliff, I saw you land with Terra, there is no way you should have survived!" Screaming now, Devon's words are barely understandable to Mac and Seth as they've not spent any time with him.

But Reggie understands him perfectly. "Guess you should have checked for a pulse then big brother, shouldn't you?" Still resting her hands on the boxes Reggie looks back at Devon impassively.

"You're mine." Devon ignores Mac and his clone as he focuses on Reggie, only, ever and always on Reggie.

"No, I'm Mac's, he bought me from Mama. Didn't know that did you big brother?" Reggie smiled at Devon then. And the very marrow in Devon's bones shivered at the sight.

Because Reggie's smile was…beatifically horrific.

It was angelic.

It was animal.

It was feral.

More, it was a mirror image of Mac's.

Devon watched as Mac smiled and shook his head at Reggie before he stepped over to her, standing between her legs, and hand whipped out and fisted in her hair, pulling on it violently, baring her neck submissively for himself, just like the animal Devon knew him to be.

And looking back at Devon, Mac leaned down, bared his teeth and bit her.

Just like that day in the cave, Mac literally took a bite out of Reggie's neck, blood pooling and flowing down her neck, over her collarbone and down her chest, over her breasts.

The scream that floated in the air was anything but human. Devon felt his heart shatter at the sight. Regina wasn't his, had never been his, she was Mac's had always been Mac's. His shattered mind roars even as his screams continue.

He never feels the small prick of a stiletto knife in his thigh as his femoral artery is pierced with the smallest of pinpricks and blood begins to drip slowly from the wound.

Such a pinprick wasn't going to kill him fast but it would kill him, sooner than Mac had originally thought to.

But, Devon's mind had fractured so much more quickly than he'd anticipated.

He could draw it out, and he did have a few more things to do to Devon, but still, he had Reggie now. He wanted to get on with the rest of his life with her.

She was his and with him now, that was all that mattered.

Turning back to the shell that had once been Devon Ashton, Mac stepped away from Reggie as he licked his lips clean of her blood, swallowing it.

Reggie stepped up beside him and wiped his lips, sucking her thumb clean of her blood as she looked up at Mac.

Watching as Mac reached for the dripping blood on Devon's body, she knocked his hand away when he brought it back to his lips.

"No!" She said loudly as she forced Mac's hand away.

"I always swore I'd drink his blood." Mac said to her with a raised eyebrow.

"You don't have to, his blood is your blood, my blood is his blood, you drink mine, not his. He's…tainted." Reggie decides after a pause.

Mac sees Seth shudder out of the corner of his eye but ignores him. "You offering Pretty Girl?" He pushes up against Reggie, his hard cock making itself known.

"Not until he's done for good, stop teasing me. You promised Mac, get it done." Reggie orders him as she steps back again.

Narrowing his eyes at Reggie, Mac reaches for and grabs her by the waistband of her jeans. "Stay the fuck here." He orders her in return. He jerks his head at Seth to make sure he ensures she does and then he picks up the fishing line from the table and ties it through the fishhooks.

Devon ignores him as he stares at Reggie, he talks to her, nonsensical stuff, about how she's his, how much she loves him, how much he loves her and that he forgives her.

Reggie doesn't hear him as she watches Mac work. Tying the line though both fishhook eyes and then together. Then with a grin and a raised eyebrow, he jerks violently on the line.

Back arching, Devon screams again as his nipples are pulled on relentlessly. The pain is encompassing, overwhelming.

And it's not stopping. "You took my Pretty Girl's, I'll take yours." Mac's words barely register as Devon looks down to see his nipples stretched and stretched some more.

"Reegggiiiinnnnnaaaaaa!" Devon screams for Regina as he sees his flesh split and break and blood gush from the wounds.

His head falls back as sobs wrack his frame and he screams her name again. Then, words fail him as his now eviscerated nipples are abraded some more. Looking down he sees a layer of white in them even as he screams at the stinging that it causes, making him hurt just that bit more.

Mac steps up and his hands rub on Devon's chest as he grins. "Just rubbing salt in your wounds little brother." He says. Devon looks into his eyes and is caught by Mac.

Regina fades from his mind as he is caught by Mac's special brand of crazy. "You took her from me." He whispers, the salt no longer hurting. Nothing hurt really. His body is beginning to shut down from the blood continuing to drip down his leg from his nicked femoral artery.

"She was never yours to take, she was always mine. She'll always be mine." So saying, Mac swiped his finger through the blood on Devon's leg and stepped back.

Watching, Devon saw him step behind Reggie and raise her shirt. Then he wrote across her abdomen in capital letters MACS.

Eyes rolling in his head, Devon screamed again and again as that one word, written in his own blood drove home the fact that everything he'd ever wanted had never been his at all, no matter that he'd possessed it briefly.

He had never owned Reggie. Not even for a second.

And then, Reggie looks down. "It needs something." She says. Stepping forward she stuck her finger in the blood dripping from Devon. Then she pursed her lips and put in an apostrophe between the C and the S. So it read MAC'S.

Closing his eyes, Devon waited to die. He doesn't feel the third fishhook as it's pierced through his cock, though he screams when it's pulled through his flesh, destroying that with which he'd damaged Regina as well.

As blackness takes him over for the last time, his final thoughts are of his mother and the scars that had appeared on her nipples when Reggie was ten.

As death steals his rancid soul Devon realises that Mac had been the one to put them on her.

##########

Walter stirred as a thud shuddered the bones serving as his carpet. Then a couple of glow sticks dropped around him. He sees that more water has been dropped. Rushing it he doesn't see the body as it's pushed over the edge.

When it lands Walter yelps and scrabbles back, thinking Mac had finally come to finish him off. But whoever it is doesn't move. Pushing the water under some bones so whoever it is doesn't steal it from him, Walter crawls forward.

They're dead, whoever they are, they're dead he realises. Pausing as he looks at the pale, naked flesh, Walter suddenly keens as he crawls forward heedlessly.

"Son, Devon!" He takes Devon in his arms as he rocks him and tears trickle down his face. "Devon, my boy."

A snicker from above takes his attention. "See how much you love your boy when you're so hungry your stomach is eating itself old man."

Mac.

"Mac? Son? What, what have you done?" Walter asks as he continues to rock his beloved boy in his arms.

"What was long overdue…Daddy." This voice is female.

Squinting, Walter makes out four figures. One of them smaller than the others. "Regina? What have you done? You were always infected." Walter said in a whisper. "Wrong, always so wrong."

"But I'm only blood of your blood Daddy." Her voice filters down, sarcastic and amused.

"Mac infected you." Walter says as he cuddles Devon's corpse to him.

"No, you and my mother took care of that. She gave Mac to me you know." Regina speaks conversationally as she moves on the edge of the pit and sits down, legs dangling in the air, scattering some small pebbles to rain down on Walter.

"What?" Walter interrupts. "You're insane."

A rock pelts down on him, landing painfully on his shoulder. "Shut the fuck up old man. You've got no fucking idea what you're talking about." Mac again.

"I'd listen to him Walter." Seth.

"Who else is up there?" Walter quavers now as he looks up, wondering who the fourth figure was. Silent and still, he almost thinks he's imaging them until they move and a light shines on them.

It was the young man from the bar that had made Walter's spine tingle. "You scouted, I'm proud of you son." He says sarcastically to Mac even as he hunches down, expecting to be hit again.

"I learned it from you." Mac laughed and Regina smiled as she stared down at Walter. There is something fathomless in her gaze as she stares unblinkingly at Walter. He shudders even as he holds Devon to him.

Looking down he sees the damage to Devon, the fishhooks re-pierced into his flesh and the blood not even dry on his corpse.

Then, there is nothing.

Looking up, Walter sees the edge of the pit is vacant.

The four of them have disappeared as they came, like wraiths in the night.

##########

Seth woke up silently. Dawn was a way off but he had a feeling today was the day. He dressed quietly and taking his boots with him, he padded down the hallway. In the kitchen doorway, he watches them take an apple and a banana and then look at the keys on the hooks at the back door.

"Take mine." He says as he steps forward and grabs two apples himself. "Grab my jacket and get one for yourself. It's fucking cold this morning. We can get some coffee on the way."

He puts the apples down on the counter by the back door as he steps into his boots and kneels to lace them quickly.

Then, opening the door, he motions Reggie through it. She steps through and they walk down the back steps to his truck in silence.

When they've been on the road for an hour, Seth speaks. "Tell me you're gonna kill him."

"I am." Reggie answers as she watches the sunrise on a new day that will bring her peace by the time it sets. "I don't tend to disagree with Mac, but this?" She shakes her head. "This was wrong."

"Agreed." Seth pulls over an hour later for gas, coffee and a bathroom break. When they get back to the truck, Reggie surprises him by taking the wheel. She's a competent driver, more than actually, given how she'd spent her last several years.

"Mac taught me actually." She answers him when he remarks on it. "The summer I was fifteen, he gave me my first orgasm and taught me to drive."

Shaking his head, Seth reclined in his seat and looked at her. Beautiful, bruised and whole, he thought. "You love him." He says out loud, to feel the words on the air and to see how Reggie will react.

"I've always loved him, he's the other half of my soul." Reggie answers simply as she reaches for a pair of sunglasses Seth had left on the dash and shoved them on her face making him grin. They dwarfed her features.

"Know what you mean." He returns her answer though as he thinks of the beautiful and bruised body he'd left snug and warm in bed this morning. "He's going to fucking kills us for going against him." He mutters now.

"No he won't." Reggie answers confidently.

"You don't know my Reece too well Little One." Seth answers before he realised she'd been talking about Mac.

They laughed together. Then, "We don't bother you now?" Seth asked her.

Shaking her head Reggie flicked a glance at him, before returning her eyes to the road. "No, it was never that, you love each other, that's obvious. It was that you had time with him that I never had."

"But you were the one who asked him to marry you and then leave you. Why did you do that?" Seth asked her now having gotten the story of the marriage certificate from Mac.

Tapping a finger against the side of her head Reggie sighed. "I had a reason at the time, I'm sure I did, but it's one of the holes I still have up here."

"Yeah, I just can't believe he fucking said yes." Seth still sounds shocked.

"Why? Because he's crazy? I'm crazy too you know. And so are you. And Reece." Reggie adds after a pause.

Wanting to snap at her, Seth stays silent. He'd like to deny it, but Reggie was right. None of them were anything close to sane, they just managed to hide their crazy from the rest of the world for the most part.

"We're just lucky you and I that we found our flip sides, our other halves, the yin to our yang, the black to our white." Reggie continued.

Huffing, Seth settled.

He saw Reggie grin as she continued to look at the road and huffed again. "Thanks for not rubbing it in." He finished after a while.

A soft laugh answers him. Then, "I have a confession to make." Reggie says softly.

"Yeah?" Seth perks up, this should be good.

"Two actually. One you'll be pissed at, the other…I'm hoping you'll be flattered." Reggie looked quickly at him again.

"Okay, tell me the one that's going to make me pissy." Seth says as he turns in his seat and hooks up a leg, keeping his eyes on Reggie.

"I haven't thought about how I'm going to kill Walter. I figured I'd work it out when I got there."

Nodding, Seth smiled. "Got you covered there, I'm not pissy either, I had a feeling you'd only think of going back." He laughed a little. "What's behind door number two?"

Because he's watching, she sees a flush cross Reggie's cheekbones. "I, uh, saw you and Reece the night before last, outside…making love." She said softly. "I watched."

Raising an eyebrow, Seth looked at her. The flush was all over her face now and her breathing had escalated a little. "I take it we turned you on?" He laughs as Reggie turns toward him briefly to lower his sunglasses and roll her eyes at him.

"Have you looked at yourselves in the mirror? You're both beautiful. Plus, you look like Mac." She winks at him and Seth's jaw drops.

"Uh," He swallows his suddenly dry mouth. "Little One, Mac is straight, sexually I mean." He says and qualifies his statement making Reggie laugh outright this time.

"I know, but you were both still hot. Besides, It was nice to see other's like we are you know?" She says as she settles down to focus on the road again.

"I do know. I never thought I'd find anyone who could take me, but Reece, it's like he's made for me, to counterbalance my crazy when it escapes. The damage I did before him, it wasn't pretty."

A soft hand reaches out and rests on Seth's knee, squeezes briefly and then drops away again.

Clearing his throat, Seth wondered how they'd gone from him coming with Reggie to make sure she was okay and protect her to her soothing him like only Reece had ever been able to.

"How do you feel about what the doctor said?" He asked after a while. They'd visited the doctor in New Mexico on the way home and then Reggie had been to see an obstetrician in Phoenix.

She had recommended surgery and Reggie was booked in for a few weeks time.

"Okay, sad, angry, irritated. But okay, kind of like it was inevitable anyway. It's not right that our bloodline continue." She answers after a while.

"Still sorry for you Little One." Seth answered, he reached out this time, hand clasping her shoulder briefly before dropping away.

When they refueled again, he took over driving. When they eventually pull up at the place they'd been not even two weeks ago, Seth got his bag out of the back and they covered the truck in silence.

Walking back down the tunnel, Reggie feels her muscles beginning to tense again. "If it looks like he's dead, I'm still going to check." She says to Seth with a stubborn tone in her voice.

"Seconded." Seth answers simply.

They walk past the cave where they'd spent time and where Devon had lost his life. The smell of bleach was still strong in it.

Passing it they continue on. When they're at the other entrance, they walk inside, their head lamps making weird shadows. Seth cracks some glow sticks and lets them fall down the pit.

A grotesque shadow moves slowly.

"Guess he's been rationing the water." Reggie says laconically making Seth laugh quietly.

"You are so Mac's." He muses and Reggie laughs this time.

"I am." She says simply and with pride making Seth roll his eyes, though really he was the same with Reece.

Opening the backpack he'd brought with him, Seth pulls out a chamois bag now. They both ignore the pleading whispers floating up the pit toward them.

Seth unrolls the bag and an old double-barreled shotgun, gleaming with oil appears in their lights. It shimmers as Reggie looks at it.

"It's beautiful, it looks old." She says as she reaches for it hesitantly, running an index finger along the short barrel. It ended about a quarter of an inch after the wooden fore-grip.

"It is, it came over with my great great grandfather from the old country." Seth answered. "It's all I have left of my family apart from Mac, Walter made my sister get rid of everything else."

Opening the shotgun, Seth opens a box of shells and takes out half a dozen. Shoving four in his pockets he puts two into the gun and then closes the barrel.

Then he steps behind Reggie and wraps his arms around her. "Together?" He asks, looking down at her. Looking back up at him, Reggie nods once.

"Okay then, she's got a bitching kick, so put your hands over mine, I'll pull the first trigger and then you pull the second and we'll obliterate him."

Bracing Reggie with his arm, Seth braces the shotgun against their sides, making sure they've got the recoil cushioned as well as they can. Then he lets Reggie put her hands on his over the fore grip and his hand on the trigger.

And waiting a few seconds to sync his breathing with Reggie's Seth pulls the trigger. He sighs as Walter's head is obliterated. The second blast makes him moan a little and he pulls his hips away as he feels his cock rise.

Opening the gun, Reggie plucks out the shells and tosses them down into the pit. Then Seth puts in two more shells.

They do the same thing again. Each shot destroying Walter, body and soul and freeing both Reggie and Seth in a way they've never been before.

Going through the entire box of shells, they slowly and repeatedly strip Walter down to nothing but a bunch of lead-filled muscle and tissue.

When they're done Seth's ears are ringing and Reggie's are ringing louder than usual. She stumbles, having a little trouble with her balance and Seth catches her, pushes her to the wall and finishes their work.

Taking out the accelerant, he tosses it down in the pit, covering everything. Then the timer and charge. When he's set it, he packs up the gun and puts it back in the bag carefully.

Reggie stands and stretches. "I feel good."

"Little One, you have no idea." Seth says as he presses his hand against his cock.

Laughing a little, Reggie leans in and hugs Seth and they walk away. Neither look back.

##########

"MacQuade, wake-up!" Reece shoves at Mac and Mac squints into the sudden light.

"What's wrong?" He asks as he sits up. "Where's Reggie?" He asks as he feels that her side of the bed is cold.

"They went back." Reece stood, dressed and waiting for Mac to do the same. "To take care of Walter." He finished and Mac stopped and stared. Reece was fidgeting. Reece never fidgeted, he was always calm and collected, even under pressure. Especially under pressure.

"Fuck." Mac spoke. Getting out of bed, he stretched his leg carefully before putting his weight on it and standing. Then he pulls on the cargo's Reece tosses at him and shoves his feet into his boots.

Leaving the laces, he pulls on a t-shirt and grabs up the flannel one he'd worn yesterday and does up his belt as he follows Reece down the hall.

Reece grabs his keys and they're out the door still shoving on their jackets. Mac's blood is boiling. "Fucking retards." He mutters.

"What do you expect? You're the fucking retard for leaving Walter alive. Ego is all that fucking was." Reece snapped at him as he got in the driver's seat and gunned the engine.

Staring at Reece Mac's jaw dropped. He'd sworn. That stopped Mac in his tracks as nothing else would have. Reece didn't swear.

"Wanted the fucker to suffer." He muttered knowing full well he sounded like a petulant child.

Rolling his eyes, Reece laughed. "Who the fuck cares? He just needed to be dead. For Seth and Reggie, you should have gotten rid of him permanently before we left. For them to heal Mac." Reece argued now as he hadn't done at the cave.

"Fucking fine! I was wrong alright? And if you ever tell them I fucking said that I'll gut you like a fucking fish before you can say a fucking word!" Mac's words snarl across the cab of the pickup at Reece making him blink and shudder, thankful Seth wasn't around to hear the tone. The threat.

"Alright, let's just get there and get them back before they do any damage to the town or something. Fuck knows what they'll do when their blood is up." Reece says now as he shifts in his seat.

"Drive faster then." Mac orders Reece now and Reece obediently pushes his foot down, shooting the truck forward.

Stretching he his leg as much as he can the couple of times they stop, Mac is still stiff and moving badly when they pull up next to Seth's covered truck.

Just as he manages to get to the cave entrance, Seth and Reggie come laughing out of it.

Mac can smell the cordite on them, they're both covered in it and he can see it smudged on their hands. He knows immediately Seth has used his, their family's antique shotgun on Walter.

He stops and braces himself, feels Reece stop beside him and do the same.

"You done then?" He asks sarcastically. They stop in their tracks and look at them.

Reggie steps forward with a grin as she winds her arms around his neck, covering Mac in the smell of gun powder and the scent of her arousal and joy.

Helpless, he's fucking helpless against his Pretty Girl. He might own her, but she owns him right back.

Fisting his hand in her hair, ignoring Seth and Reece, Mac pulls on it and kisses her. Hard and fast, his tongue seeking her mouth, her essence. He fancies he can taste her sheer relief that both Devon and Walter were well and truly gone now.

Moaning into his kiss, Reggie pushes against his cock aggressively. Mac feels her fingers at his belt, heedless of Seth and Reece standing beside them.

"You want my cock Pretty Girl?" He groans into her ear as he grabs her biceps and pulls on them, making her stop the tugging of his clothes.

"Yes, Mac, yes." Reggie answers him as she pushes forward again, or tries to.

"What are you going to do for it then?" He asks her, wondering if she'll really go there in front of others. Hoping she will, knowing that Seth will get off on it and Reece by default.

Plus, he wasn't stupid, he knew Reggie had seen them the other night and he knew when she'd come to him afterward that her wetness was from what she'd witnessed.

Mac let's Reggie's body fall as she went to her knees willingly and her hands sought out his cock through his clothes again. "Make me come Pretty Girl." Mac ordered her now.

His head fell back as he ignored the moan that wasn't from he or Reggie and his hands grabbed hold of Reggie's hair again, still pulling at her. Bracing himself carefully, Mac let Reggie suck him down.

Her mouth was hot and wet, sucking on him like he was a fucking lollipop. Opening his eyes, Mac looked up at the sky around him. A cold, clear winter day greeted him. This was his land, his home.

Looking down, Mac saw and felt Reggie swallowing him down. He felt her fingers scratching at his balls and beyond, over his perineum lightly. "Harder." He said and felt her hand grasp his balls tightly and tug.

Moaning his pleasure now, Mac thrust in and out of her mouth, his cock dragging across her tongue, the cuts in it only arousing him further. That had been another gift from Devon. Scarred striations across Reggie's tongue. Punishment from when she'd bitten him.

But fuck, they were hot as sin on his cock. "You should feel her mouth, feels like heaven and hell wrapped into one." He says out loud to Seth and Reece. Teasing them.

"Yeah? Gonna share?" Seth asks, slightly strangled now.

"Nope." Mac answers with a grin as he looks across at Seth, Reece was nosing his neck, licking him lightly even as his hands moved down Seth's chest, opening buttons, stroking and pinching at skin along with way.

"No, you're mine and you're in trouble Seth." Reece spoke softly as he drew back and stared Seth down.

"Oh fuck." Mac watched bemused as Seth swallowed.

"Gonna spank him then Reece?" He asked as he groaned a little as Reggie nipped at him, wanting his full attention.

"More." Reece says quietly as he pulls back and jerks his head at Seth, "Do yourself up, I'll deal with you at home." Mac watches as Seth shudders and obeys Reece.

Then a bite on his own cock jerks him back to his Pretty Girl. Looking down he raises an eyebrow. "Jealous." He watches Reggie's eyes narrow at him before she pulls back. Then she closes her eyes and opens her mouth, taking all of him in.

"Fuck." Mac exclaims as he watches her lips, red and swollen now, swallow him down all the way, her throat is like a glove and while he loves it, suddenly he wants to come in her.

Pulling Reggie off his cock, Mac grabs her up and pushes her back into Seth. "Hold her." He says as he braces his leg and yanks on her jeans and panties. When he's got them down far enough, Mac turns her and pushes inside her from behind.

"Fuck." He says again as he feels her wetness coat him. Seth holds her and stares at Mac as he fucks Reggie. It is something they've done before, though not for years.

He startles when Reece pushes up against him from behind and his hands skate down his chest and open his buckle. Then they delve into his cargos and pull out his cock.

Reggie moans as she watches Reece's hands work Seth's cock. But she doesn't touch.

"You're lucky I like Mac and Reggie, I'm only letting you come now for them." Recce whispers in his ear and Seth shudders again as his balls draw up under the firm tugs and twists Reece gives his cock.

"Sorry." He says, knowing it won't make a difference, but needing to say it anyway.

"You broke your promise to me Seth." Reece whispers in his ear.

Reggie doesn't hear, too caught up in watching Reece jerk Seth off. But Mac hears and he shakes his head at Seth making Seth scowl at him. "It's your fucking fault." He moans as Reece pulls on him harshly, jerking him out of his dazed arousal. "Fuck!" He swears.

"Stow it." Reece orders him. Winding his other hand around his waist, Reece pulls him back, taking his weight, everyone's weight as Seth is supporting Reggie for Mac and Mac is leaning on her.

It's something he can cope with, taking their weight. And not just physically. It's what he does. What he's made for.

Watching Reece's strong hands manhandle Seth is a switch from what Reggie had watched the night before last. Then Seth had been completely in control of Reece, but now Reece was dominating Seth, no questions asked, no holds barred.

And Reggie realised that she was the same with Mac. His centre, his missing piece. Yes, she'd said it before, but now? Now she got it.

Closing her eyes to the pleasure she was seeing, Reggie let herself feel Mac instead. His cock, his hands branding her, his heart beating against her back. His soul reaching for and matching hers.

His animal stalking and dragging hers to the ground so she bared her belly in submission.

Arching her back, Reggie twisted and took Mac's lips in a bruising, messy kiss. "More." She demanded of him.

Mac delivered, his hands grasping her hips as he pushed into her violently, Reggie grasping every silky inch of him as he pushed inside her haven.

She was his home too, Mac realises. In more ways than one.

Seth's eyes rolled in his head as he watched Mac lose himself in Reggie. He had someone, finally he had someone.

Feeling his balls draw up, Seth released into Reece's waiting hand and sighed as he felt Reece bear his weight, just as he always would.

Reece grinned to himself as he felt Seth's heat splash across his hand. Keeping his arm around Seth, he drew his hand away and brought it to his mouth, sucking it clean. Seth groaned as he realised what Reece was doing and Reece just grinned wider.

Then he leaned back into Seth and whispered in his ear. "I hope you enjoyed it, it'll be a while before you come again Seth." He laughed outright as Seth moaned at his words.

Mac watched Seth and Reece and shook his head.

His eyelids flutter and he tilts his head back again to stare up at the late afternoon sun. Feeling Reggie clench down on him Mac groaned.

Needing to taste her suddenly, he let go of her hip and one of his hands skated down her ass, pushing in between their bodies, he pushes two fingers inside her, beside his thrusting cock.

Stretching Reggie in a beautifully burning, painful way Mac groans as it makes her tighter and his fingers brushing along his own cock were turning him on further. "Fuck, so tight still." He says, grateful Reggie still felt the same on the inside.

Home, she was home. Drawing his fingers back, Mac pushed them into his own mouth and sucked Reggie's essence down. He opened his eyes to see Seth and Reece looking at him. Reece smiled faintly and Seth licked his lips.

Bending over Reggie's back even as his balls draw up, Mac whispers in her ear. "They want to taste you Pretty Girl, both of them."

As his words filter to Reggie, Mac feels her spasm on his cock, his hand pushes under her to flick at her clit, keeping her orgasm going as he finds his own.

"Yes." His breath hitches as he feels himself explode inside her, splashing himself inside his Pretty Girl as he would continue to do so until the day he died.

Eventually stopping his hips thrusting, Mac stilled, his cock still inside Reggie. His fingers were coated in her juices as he pulled them away from her. Looking at Seth and Reece Mac grins wickedly.

Then he holds his fingers out to Reece making Seth curse him.

"You took her away from me." He says simply to Seth. "If Reece wants to share her, that's his business."

Keeping his eyes wide open, Reece watched Mac as he leaned forward and inhaled deeply, scenting Reggie just as Mac liked to.

Raising an eyebrow in question Reece paused, making sure Mac was okay with what he was about to do. Mac simply nodded and Reece opened his mouth, closing it over Mac's slick fingers.

"Oh God." Reggie murmured as she watched Reece suck her juices off Mac's fingers. She knew Mac wouldn't be doing anything else, she knew this was his twisted way of saying thank you for everything Reece and Seth had done over the last months. And she knew it was his even more twisted way of punishing Seth.

Because Seth swung both ways and Reece didn't.

"Sick, you're sick." Mac glanced at her with a wicked and yet open grin on his face. "But you're my kind of sick." Reggie finished with as she pulled up her panties and jeans. "We've got to go, the timer will go soon."

She stands though, still and silent as Reece cleans Mac's hand and then pulls away. She laughs a little in sympathy as Seth tries to kiss him and is rebuffed. Then she is surprised as Seth swoops in and takes her lips with his.

It's a hot kiss. Wet and sexual in the extreme and Reggie finds herself moaning helplessly even as she pushes away not knowing how Mac will take it.

He surprises her by laughing as he pulls her away. "Leave off. Man Reece is gonna whale the tar out of your ass and I don't blame him, fucking cheat." He steps carefully away and they all follow him.

Back at the trucks, they decide that Seth will go with Reece in his and Mac and Reggie will take Seth's back.

Their journey home in tandem is a comfortable one.

##########

"When I die, I want to be spread over the canyon." Mac says softly as they reach the blacktop and begin their journey back to Arizona and their new home.

"Okay." Reggie answers him simply.

**Epilogue**

The SUV stops for gas in Cainville at a chain gas station. The driver's door opens and a man steps down.

He's old, his hair is grey, he walks stiffly and his hands are gnarled with arthritis. But for all that, he is steady on his feet as he opens the tank and begins to refuel the vehicle. His lined face peruses the town that he hasn't seen for decades.

It's grown, but he still feels the pit of evil that had a choke hold on it the last time he was in town. He feels it like a festering sore on his skin, trying to wrap around his soul and steal it from his body.

It was fitting, he thought as he rolled a cinnamon flavoured toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other laconically.

The passenger door opens, taking his attention. The woman is old too, her hair grey and pulled back in a messy ponytail sticking out from an old baseball cap. Her still bright eyes are shaded by prescription sunglasses.

The sleeveless blouse she wears shows years of heard wear and tear on her skin in the form of old scars and even some bite marks. They're marks she's not even aware of anymore.

"I'll go pay." She murmurs as she takes out her bag and walks toward the store entrance.

"I'll hit the head." The man answers as he locks the SUV. They both had keys.

When they're settled again, the man turns to her and asks for the last time. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure, it's what he wanted." She said opening the bottle of water she'd bought for herself.

"Okay then." The man starts the engine and they travel through town. Neither of them look left or right as they travel through. They'd seen enough at the gas station.

Pulling off the road some time later, the man engages the four-wheel drive and they travel over the harsh, red landscape.

After about an hour they stop and get out of the SUV, locking it after getting some water and a burnished wooden container.

Walking for a while, they eventually stop on a cliff overlooking the canyon.

Red Canyon.

Staring out over the canyon, Reggie felt her heart swell. "I had the best times and the worst times of my life here until I met you." She said quietly.

The man looked at her and smiled a little. "Been an interesting time with you in my life, that's for sure." He answered her as he turned to look out over the canyon again as well.

Watching, he saw Reggie open the wooden box. She gave him the lid. "Toss it over for me?" She asked.

Nodding, Reece tossed the lid of the box out into the canyon. They both watched it as it fell down and out of sight.

Then he took a step back, leaving the rest for Reggie. He watched as she took a deep breath and then flung the box in an arch.

The ashes spread out into the air, the breezes of the canyon picking them up and taking them to hell and back again. Just as Mac would want.

When the box was empty, Reggie looked back at Reece again and he stepped forward and threw it over the cliff as well.

As the sun began to slide toward the horizon, Reggie stirred and Reece prepared to leave.

But instead of stepping back, she turned to Reece and blew him a kiss.

Before he realised her intent, she'd stepped forward out into space, her arms out swept as if reaching for Mac.

"Reggie!" Reece called uselessly as he watched her fall. He stood there as the sun set around him and cold swept the canyon.

He stood there as the moon rose and then fell again and dawn broke.

Finally, when it was daylight again. Reece stepped away from the edge and began to turn. As he did, a shimmer caught his eye. Blinking he stared and then closed his eyes and opened them again. Shaking his head at the fancy, he turned away and walked back toward his SUV.

Behind him, in the early morning air, the air shimmers.

If he'd been a little more fanciful, Reece would have said that two figures embraced out there in the canyon, standing on thin air as their souls shimmered and merged in the early morning light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so I come to the end of my Red Canyon story arc. Thank you to everyone who has read, followed, favourited and reviewed all three stories. A very special thank you to Peachylana. Without her I would never have even written a Mac story at all.


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